The Phoenix in the Cuckoo Clock
by hogwartsaheadcanon
Summary: 18 years after the fall of Voldemort, the wizarding world is, once again, embroiled in a war against blood prejudice and dark magic. With Harry in the hands of the enemy and Ginny grievously injured, Lily Luna is willing to do anything to keep her loved ones safe. When she wakes up forty-one years from home, only one thing is clear: she might just have pushed it too far...
1. Chapter 1: The Past Waits in the Dark

**Disclaimer:** With my deepest regret, I must inform you that I'm still not JKR, and as such any and all characters or canon plot elements you see here are still not owned by me, and I'm still not making any money from this. As such still writing in five year old pyjama shorts, but that's neither here nor there...

 **Ratings:** I'm still in fairly early days with this, but I'm rating it M for language, violence/injury and potentially for explicit sex scenes, although that's not a promise ;)

 **Shout-outs:** _Enormous_ gratitude and adoration to the incredible ShayaLonnie, who beta-ed the first several chapters of this fic for me, offering enormous encouragement along with invaluable guidance on the use of hyphens and m-dashes (which can't be used interchangeably. Who knew?). Stupid amounts of love also to my favourite Ravenclaw IndieBlue, for leaving me seventeen messages on tumblr after I sent her a chapter, helping me finally name this bloody thing, and generally just being a glorious example of a human being.

 **Author's Notes (PLEASE READ):** I just _know_ I'll get questions about this, but I'm going to go over it now anyway. This fic is by and large set in the canon universe. _However,_ to quote my favourite tag, I have an 'eh approach to canon' when it comes to the epilogue and Next Gen characters, as well as a few aspects of the main story, which I will do my best to explicitly clarify and explain within the fic. What I want to make very clear now is that I have chosen to **change the relative ages of the Next Gen characters.** This is not an error or an oversight in my canon knowledge, it's deliberate because I like it better this way and it works better for my story. Just wanted to clear that up right from the off.  
Also, this is tagged as adventure and family, but there _are_ pairings—several, in fact—and they are very important to the story, just not the... essence, I suppose, nor the focus. In addition to the pairings tagged, there will be eventual Dramione, as well as background Next Gen relationships (Scorbus, anyone?). Other than that, I hope you enjoy...

* * *

Chapter One:  
 _The Past Waits in the Dark_

 _..._

 _The chamber was dark, but not dark enough to obscure the figures watching, stock-still as the red gash of a Stunning Spell tore its way through the thin, cold air. Sirius's voice was still echoing off the walls—the words "Come on, you can do better than that!" rebounding off stone in a way that was quickly becoming sickeningly ironic—and everything moved in slow motion. Lily could feel them all, every emotion going through every mind around her. Mainly there was confusion and apprehension, but there was horror, anguish, pain, shame, heartbreak, loss, fear-fear-fear, fear from every corner. Then there was elation; triumph—Bellatrix._

 _She could get there in time; Lily was certain she could get there. Everything was happening so slowly, all she had to do was cross the fifteen feet of space between where she stood and the Arch, looming black with its tattered curtain, whispering like an open mouth just waiting to swallow Sirius whole. He stood right in its jaws.  
_

 _She could save him if she could only grab hold of his robes before he fell. She could make it. However, when she tried to run, she was moving just as slowly as everything else. Perhaps her mind was just working in overdrive. Lily pushed herself to move faster, but her body wouldn't cooperate. She screamed for someone—anyone—to do something, but no one seemed to hear her. It was as if she wasn't even there, and as Sirius's body arched backwards through the Veil she could do nothing but watch in horror while Bellatrix laughed with terrifying glee. "I killed Sirius Black, I killed Sirius Black!"_

 _Lily's vision clouded, bled away into black, and when it returned the Death Chamber was gone, replaced by a garden in Hampstead Heath—one she knew well._

 _This was her home; it should have been safe. It had always been safe, and he'd promised- Dad had promised. She was herself; she should have been good enough—she'd always been good enough, and he'd promised she was—Dad had promised, 'The best I've ever seen, Lil."_

 _So why wouldn't they let her go? She could reach him, still, fight them off. Hadn't they all said she was the best, better than was good for her? But they were holding her arms behind her back and they wouldn't let her save him._

 _And Dad . . . that was the worst treachery of all. He was yelling at her, telling her to stay back while Death Eaters dragged him away. Lily didn't understand. Why wouldn't he let her help him? They were pushing him into the back of a cart now—black and pulled by skeletal, winged horses with wrought iron bars closing on him. Azkaban. They couldn't take him there._

" _ **Lily, no!**_ "

" _Let go! LET GO!_ _ **DAD, NO!**_ "

 _Fear had replaced the air around them, it was almost all she felt, although threads of sickening satisfaction and sadistic glee seeped out from under black hoods and from behind silver masks. She knew this feeling, had known it for too long, since long before she should have done. This was what the dawn of war felt like._

 _They shouldn't have been so focused on her. They should have been paying more attention. Ginny's hair was a streak of bright red as she lunged toward the cart and her husband with her wand held aloft, and all at once the fear increased to a fever pitch, almost enough to make Lily black out._

" _ **Ginny**_ _,_ _ **NO!**_ " _Harry yelled, his eyes wide with horror as the Death Eaters turned their wands on his wife._

" _ **Mum, stop, DON'T!**_ " _Al leapt forward, his hand clasping around thin air where his mother had been not a moment before, and his brother was right behind him, their cries both futile._

" _ **MUM!**_ "

" _ **GINNY!**_ " _Teddy's voice joined the desperate shouts, but there was nothing that anyone could do._

 _There was a sickening scream as Ginny's torso was sliced open, and Lily's whole body started shaking even as her mother's dropped, screaming in agony, to the grass._

 _Yes. Yes, this was what she needed. Fury. Blind, merciless fury, and she could take every one of them down. They couldn't keep hold of her now; she could do it._

 _Shame, guilt and desperation all welled up without warning and wrapped around Lily from somewhere over her shoulder. There was a blinding flash of red light just out of her vision, and everything went black, the emotion taking on worded form as it washed over her._

 _I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry._

 _The world slipped away again, and when sight returned it was duller than it had been before. Now she was weary—bone weary—and her face felt . . . odd, not her own. In the late afternoon light of a back alley, the ground was dusty and dry with recent drought, and the air felt as dry as the dirt as it scraped its way in and out of her lungs._

 _There was a man there._

 _He wasn't afraid of her, she could tell that much. Egotism and malice were rolling off him in waves, and it was clear he couldn't wait to hurt her._

 _Fool._

" _I'm giving you one chance here; tell me the passwords to the wards, and I'll leave a limb of your choice unbroken," she bit out, her voice raw and scratchy. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a proper drink of water._

 _He laughed at her, actually laughed, entertained by her_

" _You're out of your depth, girly. Shouldn't you be in school? Children these days need teaching a lesson or two about respect. Should I teach you, girly?"_

 _Whatever was sparking in his eyes—whatever it was she felt him thinking in her own mind, too close and too intense—it wasn't want or desire, not really, not specifically for her. She'd been sleeping rough for months, covered in a thick layer of dirt. Beneath that she'd been glamoured to be unidentifiable, unremarkable. Gone was the auburn wildness that usually fell about her shoulders, hair hacked short and brown while her skin, once marked with freckles and more scars than she should have had, bore no distinguishing blemishes under the grime._

 _No, it wasn't attraction, not in the least. It was power, a need to defeat and destroy the broken looking girl before him. She felt sick to her stomach._

" _Tell me the fucking passwords, and you walk out of here alive. This is my last warning."_

" _I think it's you who's on her last warning, girly." He took a step towards her, the first syllable of Incarcerous on his lips._

 _She didn't even have to raise her wand._

 _His screaming rent like a knife through the abandoned back streets as flames engulfed him. She was glad, and she wanted him to suffer. Stupid man; he should have been afraid of her when he had the chance. He was now—she could feel that, but barely. The fear was being largely superseded by pain._

 _Lily turned and left him, taking light and cautious steps toward the end of the alley. The further she got away, the more she became aware of other emotions, and after a few moments, she realised they were her own._

 _There wasn't much there, mainly coldness, anger, determination, anything to protect her family. However, just as the man's fear was overridden with his pain, her foremost feelings covered up others of her own._

 _Shame. Fear. Doubt. What the hell have I become?_

" … stop your cryin'… alight… my hand… tight. I will protect you…"

The voice became clearer as she surfaced from her Nightmares, as did the gentle sensation of rocking, and the feel of her oldest brother's arms around her. Part of her felt embarrassed by this: at less than a month from being sixteen and after all she'd seen and done, it seemed ridiculous that her boys still had to hold onto her as she thrashed through an inescapable labyrinth of memories and visions in her sleep, most of which she shouldn't even have had. Unfortunately, any complaint or attempt to save face was swallowed almost immediately by a sense of all-encompassing exhaustion. She felt too weak and too heartbroken to really care.

"… _Don't you cry. You'll be in my heart, yes you'll be in my heart. From this day on, now and forever more._ "

" _You'll be in my heart,_ " she joined Jay's gentle singing, feeling him relax instantly at the realisation she was awake. Her voice sounded reedy and far away, hardly recognisable as her at all. She carried on regardless, " _No matter what they say, you'll be here in my heart, always._ "

Lily pulled herself up into a seated position, rubbing at her eyes groggily while Jay offered her a sad half smile.

"Rough night, kiddo? Seems like they've been worse lately."

"New content, same routine. I'll be fine. Thanks, though."

It had indeed been the same routine for over a decade now. She'd been beset by the Nightmares since she was five years old and the sinking realisation that they were _not_ normal had been reached quickly. No amount of coaxing, soothing, or shaking would wake her from them, and Dreamless Sleep seemed to have no effect other than the paralysis of any external movement. "Like a bad dose of anaesthetic," 'Mione had said, just pinning her down while the horror show continued.

It had taken another year or two for everyone to believe exactly how out of the ordinary they were, the Nightmares—always capitalised in her mind, the three sharp, hard strokes of the "N" drawing lines between the usual use of the word and her own experience. She'd recognised the subjects, of course: after all, their portraits hung in her dad's office, and it had been to them she'd described what she'd seen that first night.

Her parents had believed her straight away, as had her boys, and the rest of the family soon after. The various Healers she'd been to had taken longer to convince. The same arguments were repeated over and over: someone must have told her the stories, she must have overheard, but she hadn't and the uncanny accuracy with which she recounted visions of deaths and horrors that had occurred years before her own birth—even the exact emotions of those who had been witness at the time—eventually had even the limited privy staff of St Mungo's persuaded that something odd was at play.

Eleven years later (and with the recent addition of events she'd been present for herself joining the fore—never before they happened, never when they could be useful—just a constant reminder of everything she wished she could forget) they were yet to figure out what precisely said "oddness" was. She hadn't been to an appointment since just after her eighth birthday when, in her distress, she'd set three beds in the ward on fire.

They came sporadically. Sometimes she'd be free of them for months at a time, then at others she'd have them every other night for weeks. Her mum and dad had taken to rocking her through them, singing to her in the hope she'd somehow feel that she was safe. She never did, but it did make waking up a lot less unbearable. Then when she'd gone to Hogwarts, her boys had taken up the mantle of doing the same.

"What was it this time? What did you have to see?"

She levelled an even gaze at her brother, who ran a hand back through his untamable bird's nest of russet brown hair in a gesture straight from their grandfather's portrait. He (like her parents, Al and Teddy) was used to her night-visions now after so many years: how they worked, what she saw, which Nightmares were the most recurrent and which were more rare. He understood that even after so long, she never understood that she was asleep— that the scenes were replaying inside her head, and that she could not change what she witnessed, be it a memory of something she had actually seen (like the attack at Potter House) relived through her own eyes; or a vision of an event that had occurred long before her birth that she could see and hear and feel but not interact with in any way. He knew that every time she tried to save people, and that only upon waking did she remember that there was nothing she could have done but watch.

"Sirius. The attack at ours'. And one other."

"From when you were off on your own?" he asked, more statement than question.

She nodded.

"You can't just keep it all bottled up, Lils, you know it's not good for you. Whatever happened to you, or whatever happened to people who got in your way, you're going to have to talk about it at some point. You _know_ you can tell us anything; we love you no matter what."

She knew they did. Jay, Al, Teddy . . . they were her rocks, each other's constant confidants. They'd been inseparable as long as she could remember and there was nothing she didn't trust them with. She'd tell them one day when all this was over. She just wasn't ready yet.

"I need some time, Spike. Just give me a little more time," she said, leaning back against Jay's shoulder and tugging at a particularly unruly section of the hair for which he was nicknamed.

He sighed, then smiled and ruffled her own mad bedhead affectionately: hers wavy and fluffy where his was poky and sharp-looking. She fought the urge to check that it was back to it's usual deep auburn, not still chopped and brown as it had been a few weeks before.

"As much as you need, Red. You reckon you can get back to sleep?"

"Nah, I'm going out to check the wards."

"At half six? Lily, you barely function before eleven. Draco and 'Mione have already—"

"Been over and checked the whole place three times each. I know, Jay. I just need some fresh air and time to think."

He tossed a pillow at her, which she deflected hard back at him with a wandless flick of her fingers. "Fine," he said, "but when you're grumpy as shit over breakfast don't think I'll defend you."

"Course you will, brother-mine. Always have, always will."


	2. Chapter 2: A Study in Many Things

**Author's Notes:** First up, thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has favourited, followed or read the first chapter, and a super massive shout out to those of you who reviewed. You've brightened my day so many times and made me feel all warm and cushy inside, and I'm sorry I've not done a shout-out on tumblr to you all yet—I'm back at sixth form next week, so it's been a wee bit mad this end. Now, in terms of this chapter, I'm sorry I'm behind. I intended to publish this one a week after the first, and tried, and then my internet failed and I lost all the last minute edits I made (like a moron) and couldn't quite face going through it all again for a few days. Also, I feel like this chapter reads as a little... disorganised, and very train-of-thought heavy. I'm trying to establish certain background things which you sort of need to know going forward, but it all gets more action-heavy from here on in, so bare with me my dears :) Oh! Also, yes, I've written Lysander as female, no it's not a mistake, it just... I just liked it better that way. So with all that cleared up, I hope you enjoy...

* * *

Chapter Two:  
 _A Study in Many Things_

 _..._

 _ **14**_ _ **th**_ _**December 2016**_

" _Sed I Fianto Duri, Sed I Protego Maxima, Sed I Protego Horriblis, Sed I Custodi In Laqueum, Sed I Fianto Duri, Sed I Protego Maxima."_

It was coming up on eleven, and Lily had been outside in the winter frost for hours. Her Heating Charms were holding firm but regrettably did nothing for her waning patience or the ache in her arms. She was glad to be finished.

Kicking ice off her boots, she slid into the warmth of Malfoy Manor's vast kitchen, unsurprised to find everyone else gathered there around the grand oak table. Hermione, Hugo, Scorpius and Al—hands casually interlinked between their plates—were the early risers and had likely eaten breakfast hours earlier. Jay, Teddy, Draco and even Hettie, however, were sporting the tell-tale bed hair and vacant expressions of just having woken.

Jay had naturally been right about her tiredness; Lily couldn't think of a more welcome prospect than crawling back into bed and sleeping until early evening, but recognised that it wasn't really a viable choice.

She hung up her cloak on a peg by the door and dropped down into a seat next to Teddy, who flopped over without a moment's hesitation, resting his head on her shoulder.

"Morning, Tiny. You okay?"

Lily smiled, fighting off the urge to run her hands through his mess of midnight blue hair but giving in enough to lean her cheek against it. "Morning, Ted. I'm fine; just had a bit of a restless night, so I went out early to check the wards."

He gave a soft hum of understanding. "Yeah, Jay mentioned. He said they're getting worse."

"Not really—nothing I can't handle, anyway. Don't worry yourself over it."

Teddy lifted his head just enough to glare at her—the message ' _Yeah, as if that's going to happen'_ implicit in the furrow of his brow—before turning back to his toast and leaving Lily's shoulder cold in his wake. Al was levelling her a heavy look across the oak and she responded with a characteristically indignant expression, firing a silent, wandless spark at his leg under the table. He jumped slightly, narrowing his eyes, but knew better than to push her.

"The wards were all ok then, Lily?" Hermione asked as she did battle with Hettie over a bowl of porridge. For only four years old, the youngest Malfoy was most certainly determined.

"Everything was fine, so far as I could see," Lily confirmed, keeping her mental addition of ' _Or it was once I'd finished'_ to herself. It was imperative that no-one knew about the changes, or they'd take them down, and that couldn't happen. She had to keep them safe.

"The hereditary Potter insanity seems to be rearing its ugly head. You'd have to be mad to go out in that cold," Draco muttered, earning him a stern look from Hermione.

Lily smirked. "Not mad, just Gryffindor. Petty inconveniences like the weather do not trouble the likes of lions."

There was a chorus of "Oi!'s" and "Hey!'s" from Draco, Al, Scorpius, Hugo, and Teddy—three Slytherins and two Hufflepuffs—while Hermione and Jay grinned. Though there was no inter-House animosity amongst them, there was still a keen competitive streak that they took every opportunity to prod at. Teddy's hair morphed briefly into an almost violent shade of yellow, changing back only when Jay, sat to his left, elbowed him in the chest and told him to shove his sunshine hair where the sun _didn't_ shine, not scrimping on the graphic specifics of how such a contortion might be achieved. Hermione's glaring brought a quick end to the worst of the language, though she allowed herself a small smile when she was sure Hettie wasn't about to mimic any swearing.

At times like this, it almost felt normal. Lily, her brothers, and Teddy could be simply visiting for the holidays out of choice, rather than out of homelessness. They might have been staying with the Malfoys as they did in their younger years simply because they were family, rather than because the home they'd shared with Ginny and Harry was no longer safe, nor occupied by either parent—not with Harry captured, and Ginny still confined to the Burrow, unable to walk with her injuries. The Potters and Lupin had spent a great deal of time at the Wiltshire manor over the years following Lily's spontaneous jaunt, aged six, into Draco's Apothecary in Diagon Alley. She'd managed to slip the adults and had wandered off in search of a potions supplier, fascinated by the jars of weird and wonderful ingredients, and had come across Draco's shop. By the time a very harried-looking Hermione had located her, Lily had managed to procure a free jar of porcupine quills and invited both Draco and Scorpius over for lunch at Potter House so that Al and Scorps could talk about plants.

Lily later learned that the tense conversation between Draco and Hermione in the shop that day had been their first communication since she had testified at his trial, but that had only been the beginning: Al and Scorpius had become thick as thieves, which naturally meant that Teddy, Jay, Lily, and subsequently the rest of the plethora of cousins and sort-of-cousins had adopted Scorpius into their midst. The two Malfoy boys had become a more and more common presence at Potter House, and the more time 'Mione and Draco had spent together, the closer they had become. Almost ten years after Lily had let go of Hermione's hand in Diagon Alley, the pair were married with a four-year-old daughter of their own in addition to Scorpius, and Hugo and Rose—Hermione's adopted children. Lily and her boys had long since considered the Manor an extension of their own home.

Since Hogwarts had been released for Christmas early this year—a precaution rather than a celebration—Al, Jay and Teddy (Al, like Lily, in sixth year; Jay and Teddy in seventh) had been welcomed into Malfoy Manor without hesitation, with Lily herself reappearing there after four long months of being AWOL.

She'd been a wreck when she'd arrived less than two weeks previous, but she was already feeling better than she had since August. She wasn't used to being without her boys—her brothers and Teddy—and the strain of their absence had worn down on her to near hysteria. She'd needed to come home, and home was wherever _they_ were.

Home was no longer a term that conveyed a sense of safety, however. They'd thought Potter House was safe—their beautiful Hampstead Heath property with enough spare room for all the family constantly dropping in and out, trees and a pond in the back garden, but still London; little as it felt that way at times. Potter House had always felt secure, and with the mounting tensions in the Wizarding world, it had seemed to be one of few remaining places nothing and no one could get to. They'd been wrong. They'd underestimated the Death Eaters, and they'd paid the price for it. Lily for one was not about to make the same error twice.

The idle and not so idle chat continued for half an hour or so, swinging between vague plans to go through some more tactical information for the Order later in the day, and a very heated argument on the best toppings for morning toast. Lily and Scorpius almost came to blows across the table, but that was nothing new; the pair were both highly competitive, resulting in a tight friendship that many outsiders mistook for enmity.

The group had just lapsed into a comfortable silence when Teddy stood, stretching out his back, and made for the kitchen door. "I'm going to find Aristotle; promised Victoire I'd write to her today."

The change in the atmosphere was instantaneous, though Teddy was already gone and thus unable to observe it. A mixture of sceptical and worried glances were tossed around the table while Jay and Al watched Lily as though she were a potentially dangerous caged animal. She said nothing, simply staring at the door Teddy had left by with narrowed eyes. Seconds later there were several gasps and jumps as the four unlit pillar candles placed down the centre of the table burst suddenly into flames.

Hermione flicked her wand to douse them, shooting Lily a weary glance. "You might be a little more careful not to burn the house down."

"I don't do it on purpose," Lily muttered, glaring mutinously at her plate.

Hermione sighed. "No, I'm sorry, of course you don't. And you are _so_ much better at controlling it than you used to be."

"It's fine. I'm sorry for making you all jump. I'll be in the library if you need me."

Lily exited by a different door than Teddy, one leading to the West Wing of the manor, and so the library. Optimistically, she gave her brothers an hour before they came after her, but that was only if Al was feeling exceptionally persuasive in controlling their oldest sibling. She didn't want to talk about it, not in the least. She'd had her blow out just after her return, raising a copse of trees to the ground in the woods at the edge of the property. If there was one subject she had no desire whatsoever to discuss any further, it was Victoire.

Forcing the entire situation from her mind, she gathered up the hefty stack of tomes waiting for her and settled into her preferred window seat with the best view of the front gates. She wasn't expecting anything at that moment, yet she still found herself glancing up every few minutes for any sign of interference with the wards. Teddy and Al would worry over her behaviour, and Jay would likely roll his eyes and tell her she was being paranoid, but then again none of them had seen what she had over the last few months.

They all had their roles within the Order, their niches. As soon as the tensions had become seriously worrying again, and the old organisation had recalled two years earlier—a few months into Lily's 4th year at Hogwarts— it had been decided that the youngsters who wanted (or rather demanded, as was more often the case)to be told what was going on would be. The main body of the returning Order of the Phoenix was made up of those who had been under age for part, if not all, of the last war, and they remembered all too well the consequences of keeping passionate and headstrong adolescents in the dark. Ignorance lead to mistakes being made, foolish risks being taken, and the rising generation had been permitted to become "honorary" or theoretical members of the Order on the proviso that they would, in exchange, promise not to act out on their own and to do as they were told by those of age.

Lily doubted she would ever forget the screaming match that had occurred between her grandmother and mother over her own involvement. It had been bad enough for the others—especially Al, Scorpius, Lorcan, and Lysander, her year-mates—but the fact that she was a six months younger than the next youngest 4th year and should, by all rights, have been in 3rd had made matters even worse. She'd been thirteen at the time, having been permitted to start her schooling a year earlier than usual due in a large part to her having accrued significant skill with wandless magic. Lily's childhood, like those of all the younger generation of her family, had been marked by the constant presence of _people._ She could barely recall an occasion when it had been just herself, her brothers and parents, or even when Teddy (so often at Potter House that he had his own room, and it was regularly forgotten that he didn't technically live there) had been the only addition to their unit. There were always guests, people dropping by, Sunday lunches or Friday night dinners that filled the house with noise and laughter.

Naturally, this meant that the number of adult witches and wizards in the vicinity was always fairly high. This, in addition to the fact that almost all of said adults were well-respected war heroes, meant a child wishing to experiment with magic without running into problems with their trace had the perfect smokescreen for their endeavours. Of course, the lack of a wand provided a slight stumbling block to such plans, but it didn't take Lily (along with the others determined and interested enough to put in a little effort) very long to realise that it wasn't that much of an issue at all. Every young witch or wizard demonstrates accidental magic at some point—magic requiring neither a wand nor incantations—and it was only a small step from accidental to deliberate, then to controlled, and eventually to almost effortless. As constantly determined as she was to keep up with her older family members—her boys in particular—Lily had practised and pushed herself harder than any of the others, so much so that Professor McGonagall had thought it 'only fair' that she be allowed to start at Hogwarts with Al rather than be left behind.

Of course, due to this age gap between Lily and the other fourth years, Molly had been horrified at the very idea of letting Lily in on any information at all until Harry had cut in. Lily had felt a keen burst of pride when her father argued that age was simply a number compared to the real issue of having the maturity to handle a situation, and that as she had kept pace with the others her whole life thus far and spent as much time in education as them—learned as much as them—she had earned the right not to be treated as more of a child than they were.

Harry had then reminded his mother-in-law that dark forces had not left Harry alone when he'd been in 4th year—that they hadn't shown any sympathy for age when he or Ginny had been _1_ st years. That age had not protected Cedric Diggory or Colin Creevey. He had also pointed out that Lily had been forced into a much greater understanding of what might be coming than even the older children as soon as she'd started getting the Nightmares.

He'd been right about that. Lily had seen for herself exactly what the consequences of keeping too many secrets had been, over and over, in her mind for years. It terrified her, but that was exactly why she had to know the facts: no matter what horrors the light might expose, it was never worse than what the imagination could conjure in the dark.

Gradually, the underage members of the Order of the Phoenix had taken their places in the effort to prevent, and later to win, war. At first, they had merely listened in on meetings, taking some small comfort in knowing what was happening. With time, they had taken more active roles according to where their confidence lay. They brewed potions, grew ingredients, discussed strategies and tactics, planned wards—everything from helping George perfect new hardware for field use, down to analysing dizzyingly complex arithmancy equations on risk analysis and likely outcomes. The one thing they had been categorically told they would _not_ do was fight, and with pacifying nods and understanding smiles, they had agreed. There was little point in reminding anyone that it was entirely possible that a fight would come to them, leaving little choice. So, in quiet, several of them had made themselves prepared.

Of course, though they all pretended it hadn't, everything had changed since the start of summer, when the Death Eaters had claimed the long abandoned island of Azkaban to hold prisoners of war; since they had carved a scar into Ginny's torso in her own back garden and carted Harry away in the back of a damp black carriage. It had been then that the fear had truly become real, as the attack on Lily's home had joined the other chilling snapshots of the past haunting her Nightmares. The realisation came down hard and fast that it was all happening again, just like before.

Still staring out of the window, Lily rubbed absently at her left arm and the long, winding scar that lay there, remembering the steps she and the boys had taken to ensure that at least some of the mistakes of years gone by—some of the mistrust which had torn people apart and killed the first James and Lily Potter—could not happen again. They dared not tell any of the adults, of course: however pure and noble her and the boys' intentions, Lily paled to imagine how they would react if it was found out the four of them had made an Unbreakable Vow. It wasn't Dark Magic, not really—not unless you broke it—but it _was_ dangerous: it was quite literally putting their lives on the line, and that was not something that ever went down well.

Shaking her head to free herself of the grim thought process, Lily turned back to her books. From what the few who'd been close enough to gather any information could tell, the wards around Azkaban were practically impenetrable, but it wasn't about to stop her from trying. If neither nuanced curse-breaking or brute force would bring them down alone, a combination of the two seemed the only option short of an inside job, something that even, or perhaps most especially, Lily was violently opposed to. The Nightmares had taken her to Azkaban before. There was no way in hell she was going to stand by anyone going _near_ the place unless they were in complete control.

Despite her feelings regarding the island fortress, Lily struggled with the inactivity of being at the Manor. For four months she'd tried to get hold of any scrap of information that might constitute a break in the case, and she'd had no luck whatsoever. The wards operated on several complex layers of security: passwords, identity detection, blood offerings. The key, at least as far as she could tell, was the passworded levels; if they could gain access to those, bringing down the rest would be relatively simple. But there were _dozens_ of codes, they changed daily, and were only given to those who were journeying to Azkaban that day. Having been unable to locate anyone on the day they knew all of the passwords, her efforts had been for nought. She thought she'd been on the right track with the Death Eater in the alley, but . . .

Lily shook her head, preferring not to think about that particular event. She was ashamed of what she'd done, and she knew her temper would flare up if she dwelled on it for any length of time.

The fact remained that she didn't feel like she was _doing_ anything—like she was helping in any way. The likelihood was that the answer to their problems would be found by someone whose primary area of expertise was arithmancy, and it had never been her first choice of subjects. Of the four of them, Al had always excelled with ward setting and breaking (though she'd had enough skill to alter the manor's wards on her own) almost as much as he did with Herbology—like godfather, like godson—and he'd had no joy so far.

To put it kindly, her chances were slim.

A few days of reprieve had found the occupants of Malfoy Manor brewing various potions with Draco: Healing Draughts, explosives, mind-affecting brews; anything that might be able to help the Order combat the mounting levels of discord. Once that had been done, Lily had felt high and dry. Jay had told her repeatedly to be patient, not to do anything daft like, for example, disappear off the map for four months without telling anyone where she was, leaving the stone linked to her bracelet as the only way to know she was alive.

It was in the Scatter Bag in her pocket, now—the bracelet. If she kept it on, she checked and rechecked her dad's charm every few minutes, driving everyone—herself included—mad in the process. It had been a fifteenth birthday present from Teddy, originally: a thin goblin-forged silver chain with one small charm of a lily cut from red quartz.

" _A fire lily,"_ Teddy had explained with a smirk as he'd fastened it around her wrist. " _It seemed fitting. I've charmed it so it's connected to my earring. See how it's glowing slightly? As long as it's doing that, it means I'm okay, I'm safe. The earring will do the same for you. That way if you do anything bonkers, we'll know you're alright."_

The earring in question had been _her_ gift to _him_ on his sixteenth—one that had got her three months of detentions with Neville. Teddy had just had his first ear piercing done (admittedly by Lily, Al and Jay in the bathroom with a needle) and Hermione had made them watch _The Breakfast Club_ over the previous summer. In a fit of sentimentality, Lily had found a way to break the charms on the points counters and procured a diamond from the Hufflepuff hourglass. After a few books on Metal Charms and securing permanent transfigurations, she'd managed to set the stone into what had once been a Galleon to form a diamond earring like Claire's from the film. Teddy had barely taken the thing out since that birthday.

Over time, Lily had added more charms to her bracelet, modelled after the original: stones of various colours now adorned it for different family members, all of which had, to her relief, still been emitting a subtle glow when last she'd looked, although her father's was dimmer than the others. At least it meant he was still alive.

After five minutes more reading, the library door creaked open and Lily sighed. Twenty minutes total; clearly Al wasn't feeling too persistent that day. Her brothers walked in, scanning the room for her, and it struck her again (as it always did, even after nearly sixteen years) how alike they actually were if you looked close enough.

Al had their father's colouring through and through; bright emerald eyes and jet black hair, although his fell smoothly to near his chin, where Harry's stuck out in all conceivable directions, like Jay's. Jay (the brother more often told how like his father and grandfather he looked), though, was russet haired—a reddish-brown split between both parents, with hazel eyes like the first James Potter, his namesake. Regardless of the differences in colouring, however, their faces were similar: same nose, same eye shape. Al had always been a little pointier, slightly more lithe of build than their older brother, but Lily knew them well enough to see the similarities where others couldn't.

Once they spotted her, they offered half smiles and wandered over. Al pulled up a chair opposite Lily, and Jay moved his sister's legs so he could settle into a spot on the window seat beside her.

"You know," Al began, "there was this girl once who told me to pull my head out of my arse and—"

"Piss off. I don't want to talk about it," Lily cut in, and Al gave a slight smirk that screamed ' _I'm right and we both know it_. It was not Lily's favourite expression. "You know, I don't think Scorpius is good for you, actually," she announced, turning to speak to Jay while gesturing to Al. "See, he's taken up the Malfoy Smirk, hasn't he?"

Jay feigned concentration on his brother's face. "Fuck, I think she's right, Albie. I don't reckon you've got the cheekbones for it, mate."

Al simply grinned and threw a few wandless sparks at his siblings, not needing to remind anyone how long the pair of them—and Teddy—had spent telling him how _clearly_ he and Scorps were in love, and just to fucking _do_ something about it already.

Lily's brothers seemed to think her situation was comparable. She disagreed.

"Really though, Red, it's madness. Why don't you just bloody _talk_ to him?" Jay asked, gesticulating with his hands as if it really were that simple.

"What, like you just _talk_ to Lysander?" she shot back.

Jay had the decency to go a little pink, while Al hid a snort in the crook of his elbow. "I try, don't I? She's just in a world of her own, totally different plane of existence. Like mother like daughter," Jay argued, though his expression had gone a little glazed. The boy was a veritable slave to the ethereal blonde, passing weekend after weekend trundling along behind her as she collected interesting plants or tailed faeries through the Forbidden Forest, desperately trying to indicate his interest with every hard-won announcement of " _Look, Lissy, I like you. I really like you"_ met with a wide-eyed response of " _Oh. That's lovely, James. I like you too"_.

"The point is, Lil, that we all know whatever's going on with Vic just isn't . . . look, she's not the one for him, and everyone knows that. She _certainly_ knows, and he probably does too, but you know what he's like. He's a pleaser. He won't deny anyone something they want. But if it's what _you_ want versus what _she_ wants, he'll choose you every time."

"That's exactly why I _can't_ talk to him, Al!" Lily threw her hands up with exasperation. "If I ask him for anything, he'll do it whether he actually wants to or not, and that's just taking his choices away from him. You can't just tell people to choose between friendship and . . . not to mention I've been practically a sister to him my whole life—" Both of her brothers snorted, but she shot them a quelling glare. "—and I'm younger, and . . ." She trailed off, and they fell silent. The same argument had been had many—far _too_ many—times without success on either side, and there was little point in having them again.

Jay pulled his little sister into a one-armed hug, and Al moved onto the window seat to do the same on the other side. "It'll work out, Red, I swear it will."

She responded with nothing more than a huff, not believing Al's words but being comforted by both boys' presence nonetheless.

…

Al and Jay had stayed with their sister in the library for half an hour or so before leaving with mumbles about chess and gobstones, which she knew were code for "dueling practise that you aren't invited to" (she never was anymore—they said she didn't play fair, which was a dirty lie: she just had a particular proclivity for hex-slinging, which often resulted in injury to others).

For two hours after that, Lily worked alone, taking notes from her pile of textbooks for something—anything—that could help them crack Azkaban. Her mother was still incredibly shaken, still healing, but at least she was at the Burrow. At least _she_ was safe.

Her father, however, was not, and the awareness of this fact was like a constant itch in the back of Lily's mind.

It was in this state of grim, determined research, that Teddy found her, crossing to her window seat from the door on sock-padded feet to settle beside her.

"Tiny…"

She cut him off without glancing up from her book. "Don't call me that. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am _not_ short—you're just all unnaturally massive."

He gave a soft snort of amusement in reply before going silent for several moments. Lily tried to ignore it, but it was too thick, too heavy, and she'd never been any good at holding her tongue anyway. She slid her fingers under her glasses to rub irritably at her eyes, and unleashed a sigh.

"What? You were going to say something. What is it?"

Teddy rolled his eyes fondly at her grouchiness, but then his expression turned serious as he eyed the book in her lap. "Researching Azkaban again?"

"Answering a question with a question is terribly bad form, Lupin."

"Hey, no need to be spiky. I just… I worry about you is all, Lils; you know that."

Lily flinched slightly, turning her attention to the torn corner of the page in front of her. "I really wish you wouldn't."

"Well, maybe I wouldn't have to if you actually _talked_ about what's going through your head for once."

 _Merlin, what is_ with _everyone today? Can't a girl be moody, taciturn and borderline paranoid in peace?_

"Urgh. Bloody Hufflepuffs—you're all so… _feelsy."_

Teddy laughed at that. "And you Gryffindors are all so emotionally constipated, so I guess we balance out."

Lily's heart flipped a little at that, and she entertained a brief fantasy of ripping it out and drop-kicking it through the window.

"Come on, Lily, talk to me. If not for your sake then for mine: set my mind at rest."

"Feelsy _and_ manipulative… " Lily grumbled before sighing and running a hand through her hair. "I just don't like him being in there, Ted—you know that. They shut Azkaban down for a reason—that place is evil: proper, to-the-very-core _evil._ Dad doesn't belong there—well, no-one really belongs there, but Dad especially. And…" she trailed off, her words jamming in her throat for a second, "… and I'm worried that if we don't get him out quick enough, there might not be anything left _to_ get out. I just don't want to lose him, Ted."

Teddy released another long sigh and looped his arm over Lily's shoulder, tugging her into his side. "I know. None of us do, and we _won't._ We won't let that happen, but you're putting _way_ too much pressure on yourself to fix everything. For Merlin's sake, as if you haven't just spent _four months_ pulling insane risks, abandoning school to try and find an answer. It's not all on you, Red. It isn't."

"How can you say 'we won't let that happen'? You know—you of all people know—that people aren't necessarily going to be fine just because you love them or need them to be."

"None of my parents died through lack of people looking out for them, Lils. All three of them were in the wrong places at the wrong times—not rescue party situations, just… shitty luck, I guess."

Shitty luck indeed. While Sirius had been alive, trapped inside Grimmauld place, he'd only been saved from going up the walls entirely by Remus and his somewhat soothing discussions of the future—of what they'd do with their lives after the war. From what their portraits said, it had been during one of said discussions that had brought up the idea of children. Magical medicine, despite lagging hideously behind in some areas, was advanced far beyond Muggles in others. The same sort of methods the Muggle world was just beginning to use to affect, alter, and recombine DNA had been easily achievable by magic for decades—even in the '90s—and mixing the two mens' genes only required relatively simple spells and charms. They could even double and triple check that no traces of lycanthropy would be passed on, just to ease Remus's mind.

Tonks being Tonks had naturally thought this was a wonderful plan and offered to surrogate without hesitation, citing no particular desire to raise children of her own, but a long-held wish to be someone's "cool aunt" one day.

They'd just managed to get the DNA magically combined when Harry and the rest of the D.A. broke into the Department of Mysteries, and Teddy's first parent died years before he was even born.

Remus had, understandably, not been able to think about their plans after Sirius's death. It had taken around two years for Tonks to accept that he wasn't going to recover from it alone, and she had taken matters into her own hands. She'd kept the magically combined and preserved genes, hoping Remus might one day want to use them, and decided that if this was the only way to drag one of her closest friends out of his own head, then so be it.

She'd been three months pregnant when Remus—who had, as predicted, been shaken up enough by imminent fatherhood to really begin to heal—was killed by Dolohov in the Battle of Hogwarts, and so Teddy lost his second father.

Although "motherhood" as such had not originally been part of the plan, Tonks had taken on the mantle of Teddy's one remaining parent with flair. For two years she had raised her son, showering him with love and spoiling him rotten. All that came to an end during what should have been a fairly run-of-the-mill raid with the Aurors, in which she'd taken a Killing Curse to the chest.

Losing two parents was a concept too awful for most to bear, and Teddy Lupin had lost _three_.

"How do you do it? How do you cope with not having them with you?" Lily asked, her voice muffled where she'd turned to bury her face in Teddy's jumpered shoulder.

"I suppose I love everyone I _do_ have _really, really hard,"_ Teddy replied, a slight note of teasing in his tone. Bloody git; he always knew _exactly_ what to say.

"Hufflepuff," Lily grumbled accusingly into his jumper.

He squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. "And very proud of it. Excessive amounts of love is sort of our thing. Maybe even _too_ much."


	3. 3: A Truth Neither Expected Nor Desired

**Author's Notes:** I know, back again so soon? I just wanted to get back on schedule—this update isn't early, my last one was late ;) I don't think I have much to say this time in terms of clarification, though I will provide a great big face-splitting grin in response to the reviews I got shouting about Wolfstar. Any lover of those boys is an eternal and immediate friend of mine. As for Sable, who wanted to know whether her maths was right—I shan't tell you, you'll just have to keep reading and find out... *wibbles fingers mysteriously* And with that, on with the show...

* * *

Chapter Three

 _A Truth Neither Expected nor Desired_

 _..._

As was the theme at Malfoy Manor, the day dragged on and the rest of the inhabitants of the stately home filtered into the library, each pursuing their own area of expertise or interest. Jay and Hugo were huddled over a large map of Great Britain, the Marauder's Map laid out further up the table, attempting to crack a way to track Death Eaters throughout the country. Draco, Al, and Scorpius had a map too; lines intersecting in a dizzying tactical web, discussing migration, unanticipated movements, proximity to Muggle communities and any other geographical factors that could influence the war efforts. Hermione worked alone with a mountain of textbooks and pieces of parchment containing some form of arithmancy beyond even Al, though he said it was actuarial—some attempt to use hard magic in place of Divination to predict likely outcomes of the war as it progressed. Teddy was entertaining Hettie, sat next to Lily at a transfigured desk while she fiddled with a potions set-up. What with secrecy and disguise becoming ever more important, she was trying to find a way to bottle Teddy's Metamorphmagus abilities into a potion, though headway was slow. It was an odd atmosphere, one that didn't know whether or not to be comfortable as they strived against an enemy that felt simultaneously distant and exceedingly close.

They'd been working in relative quiet—Teddy and his rapidly cycling hair colour were quite possibly the only things that could keep Hettie from menace and noise for any length of time—for perhaps two hours when they were all pulled from concentration by the clatter of a stack of books toppling to the floor. Hermione had leapt from her seat and stood, face ashen, staring at her papers as though they'd just opened out into a black hole before her.

"Granger?" Draco asked, his voice cautious as he stood and moved over to his wife, looking down at her work to see if he could identify the cause of her obvious shock. "What is it? What've you found?" He placed a grounding hand on her shoulder, only to look more confused and slightly stung when she recoiled as though bitten.

"I don't . . . but it can't . . . I just . . . I've got to . . ." Hermione's voice shook—rare for the normally composed and assured woman—as she grabbed up her papers and disappeared through the library doors, presumably to her study, where she was often found when she needed quiet. The rest of the room had gone silent and still, eyes fixed on the doors before swivelling to one another, unconcealed fear evident in every single pair.

"She was predicting outcomes," Al said quietly, wrapping his hand tight around Scorpius's.

"That doesn't mean . . . something might just have gone wrong. She's been working on that for months. If she's found an error in her calculations, she'll be distraught," Hugo said reasonably, but without conviction.

There was something left in the air in Hermione's wake, something cold and paralysing. Hettie was shooting looks between her father and brothers, her tiny blond brow furrowed. "Mummy? What's wrong with Mummy?"

Draco smoothed his face over, crossing the room to press a kiss into his daughter's brow. "Nothing's wrong Princess, Mummy's fine. She's just had a bit of a surprise. Can you stay here with Teddy while I go and see what her surprise is?" he asked gently, and even through the sudden unease, the others found themselves smiling.

Draco was infamously blunt, the narcissism instilled in him by his childhood never having truly abated, but Hettie really was his little princess: the child had him wrapped around her little finger, and she knew it, as did Draco.

Hettie paused then nodded, receiving another kiss and a smile before Draco left the library in search of Hermione. Everyone cast glances at the work they had been doing, but it was clear no one would be able to concentrate now.

Hettie, still in Teddy's arms, tugged on the shoulder of his sleeve with imploring eyes. "Can we play magic now?"

With an easy smile, Teddy nodded. "Course we can, little monster. Let's see if Jay's learned any more fun spells, yeah?"

Everyone convened in the middle of the large rug running from the doors to where the shelves started, arranging themselves in a circle. Hettie hopped out of Teddy's arms once he sat, crossing to resettle herself in Scorpius's lap—the son was almost as much of a slave to the little girl's whims as his father—and gave Jay an expectant look.

Jay was the master of wonderful (if impractical) charms and he was often called upon to provide entertainment. As Lily's oldest brother grinned and drew his wand, the circle settled in for what could potentially be a long wait.

Things, they all knew without uttering the words, were about to change again.

…

It was another hour and a half before Draco and Hermione returned, the circle at that point swirling with autumn leaves falling from Jay's wand. The two adults were both stony-faced, though they were clearly trying to pretend for the sake of Hettie, whose face lit up as soon as they entered.

"Mummy!" she squealed in delight, jumping up and running into her mother's waiting arms, kicking up the leaves in the process.

"Has Jay been teaching you lots of new spells?"

"Mm-hmm. I like the snow best."

Hermione smiled softly at her daughter on her hip, brushing a few wild strands of white-blond hair—the colour her father's, the wild fluffy texture her mother's through and through—from her eyes. "And what's the word for those kinds of spells?"

"Charms," Hettie replied with a proud grin, which again earned all around smiles.

"Well done, you clever girl. Now, I need to borrow Jay and the others for a little while. Would you like to go and play with Daddy?"

Draco was met with a narrow-eyed look from his daughter, far too cunning for her four years: no one had any doubts as to which House she'd be sorted into.

"Can we go on the broomstick?"

Draco sighed. "It's cold outside, Princess."

"I want to go on the broomstick. Please, Daddy?"

Of course, Draco had lost the battle as soon as it had begun. He nodded wearily but was wearing his trademark paternal grin when Hettie let out a whoop and, once Hermione had put her down, ran over to grab his hand. She tugged him firmly toward the doors and began a grammatically faulty discussion of what parts of the grounds they could explore.

Once they were gone, the vast library was silent once more. Everyone watched 'Mione apprehensively as she seated herself on the floor between her sons: whatever she had to say, no one wanted to hear, whilst simultaneously realising they had to.

Lily shoved her hands into her lap to avoid grabbing hold of Teddy's arm. Of course, he knew—as he always did—and grabbed her hand back to lace his fingers through hers. At any other point, she would have reacted to the looks Al and Jay were shooting her—the former far more subtly than the latter—but she was too intent on Hermione.

"Whatever this is, it'll be okay. We'll all get through it. We always do, yeah?"

Lily nodded, not daring to look at Teddy even to respond to his whispered reassurance, although from the corner of her eye she could see that his shaggy hair had paled; the midnight having seeped away to be replaced by such a pale blue it was almost white.

Hermione had linked hands with Scorpius on her right and Hugo on her left, letting out a deep breath that deflated her shoulders before she began, eyes on the rug before her. "You shouldn't have to be here. None of you . . . we . . ." Her eyes flickered up to Teddy. "Good people lost their lives in the last war so that you wouldn't have to . . . to grow up with this sort of thing pressing on your minds. It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"We all know what we're doing here, Mum. We've not been forced into anything. We want to help," Hugo said with his typical tone of quiet reassurance, squeezing his mother's hand.

"I know, I know you do, I just . . . I wish things could be different. I've never wished that more than I do now." Hermione released the hands of the boys, reaching into the pocket of her jeans and bringing out shrunken scrolls of paper.

She enlarged them on the floor before her, and Al leant over immediately to scan what was written as Hermione began to try and explain. "I've been working with arithmancy to try and establish the potential outcomes of various paths. Initially, the idea was just to work forward from the present, but it got considerably more complex than that. I've ended up factoring in events back to the mid-sixties," she pointed to the area of arithmancy in question, allowing Al to follow her words with the evidence, "working through to the present day and beyond, and then running through other event patterns— Alternate Universes, if you like—where different decisions had been made at different points. It seems . . . no matter how you factor in the changes, any path which remains unchanged before Halloween, 1981, results in the same conclusion."

Lily's heart skipped a beat. Halloween '81: the night she and Jay's namesakes had been murdered.

Hermione ploughed on. "There are other fixed points of course— hundreds— you all remember how time works? My explanation . . ." Everyone nodded, slowly and with a mounting sense of dread, except for Jay, who shook his head. "Oh, no, of course, you were . . . visiting Ginny at the time." Mione's voice broke slightly over the name of her friend and the others flinched. No one had really come to terms with Ginny's injury.

Hermione cleared her throat before continuing, forcing a businesslike tone and expression. "Well, moving through time is very much like moving through a physical space; a country, for example. Now, imagine you were walking from the top to the bottom of a country. It's a criss-cross of rivers and roads, as you see on your maps. A road once built, is a permanent structure— concrete, fixed into the earth. It can't flow, can't move, it just is what is is. A river, on the other hand, is in constant motion, always changing, and if you apply enough pressure from external influences, a river can even be forced to change its course. Time is much the same way: parts are rivers, parts are roads. The theory governing which is which is . . . well, beyond me. It seems entirely random, but what this means is that some points in time, some events, are fixed, and will find a way to happen no matter what changes around them. However, other things are amenable to change— the rivers between the roads can be altered, really quite significantly if enough effort is put into doing so. It's not like the 'Butterfly Effect' that's so popular in Muggle culture. Time is, in fact, _exceedingly_ stubborn and unwilling to be shifted, but in the 'river' areas, it _can_ be done."

Everyone sat in silence for several beats, awaiting Jay's response. "So . . . how does that affect what you've been doing? I don't understand how it lines up . . ." He trailed off, noticing with horror, as the others had, that Hermione's eyes were welling up with unshed tears.

"According to my calculations— and they're right, I've quadruple checked them; Draco's done the same— what happened that night— the . . . the death of James and Lily Potter— led us away from any potential future in which we could win. The last two wars . . . they're not separate, really. They're all battles, part of one fight separated by the years, but . . . there is no way we can win in the end. Had James and Lily lived, everything would be different, but . . ."

No one said a word. No one so much as breathed, although every held pair of hands tightened around each other as if everyone was suddenly trying to cling to the earth itself.

The silence stretched out like the sea, pretending to be a stream from a distance with its true vastness only revealed with a proximity too great to turn back. It couldn't be true. It just couldn't.

"So how do we fix it?" Jay asked, face blank and voice shaking beneath the firmness he attempted to veil it with.

"We don't. We can't. There's nothing to be done, nothing possible. It's an un-winnable situation; we've backed ourselves into a corner for the last thirty-five years, and now . . . there's nothing we can do. Nothing."

Lily could feel it building up—the shaking, burning under her skin and through her veins, lacing through her blood and spreading outward into every corner of her being, every cell. Teddy's hand was still holding hers, and he noticed first, even through the shock—the pure, sickening horror of what they'd just been told.

It was the end: a parting order. A death sentence for them and for everything they'd fought for. They wouldn't make it out of this; they'd lose everything. They'd been born to lose.

"Lily? Lily, look at me. Look at me, Tiny; just breathe." Teddy sounded a million miles away, and Lily couldn't look at him; she couldn't look at anyone. Her Nightmares were flashing past her vision in bright, surreal tones: all the death, the destruction, the pain and fear and loss that had been for nothing, and suddenly everyone else was there too, mixed into the background dying in seas upon seas of green light. She was vaguely aware that there were hands under her arms, pulling her to her feet, guiding her steps, and that there was suddenly cold wind biting at her cheeks. The shaking was getting worse; furious and contained only by the knowledge that there were _people_ holding her who would get hurt if she didn't keep herself in check.

"Let go."

Her own voice was just as far away as Teddy's had been. She wasn't even certain she'd spoken until, after a few moments of hesitation, the hands around her arms released. She bit down on it—the anger, desperation and sensation of her whole body trying to tear itself to pieces—for just a few moments more, long enough for them to get back, get away from her.

 _Shame. Fear. Doubt. What the hell have I become?_

The air around her was hot and red; smoke invaded her nostrils as the world seemed to shake itself apart. It was a different magic that poured out through her skin, not like anything else she—or anyone else—could produce. It was vicious, dangerous: destruction unleashed upon the world, and then . . .

Gone.

It was over.

Lily opened her eyes to find herself in the same copse of trees she'd burnt down a few weeks prior, where the remnants now burned again with smoke spiralling into the sky. It was gone, and she felt empty. Helpless.

"Hey, we're here. It's all right; we're here. It's okay; it's done now."

It was Jay's voice this time, just behind her, though she lacked even the energy to turn to him.

Then Al was speaking, his gentle concern making her feel calm or tired; she didn't know which. "You need to rest now, Lils. Come on little sister, we'll take you up. Have you got her, Ted?"

And the ground was gone from beneath her, the smell of smoke replaced by a mixture of wool and leather, soap, forest, and freedom: Teddy.

"Hey, what did we say? We'll . . . we'll deal with this like anything else, right? We'll figure it out, Tiny; it'll be okay."

She couldn't bring herself to argue; just curled herself into his warmth, not destructive like her own but gentle, familiar, safe.

Time always passed strangely after such big outbursts, so Lily couldn't have said how long it was before she was lying in bed, duvet pulled up around to her chin, and the boys draped in various positions by her sides—and possibly on top of her; someone was propped up against her back. She just knew they were all there, and if they were there, it was okay. It wouldn't be, they knew that now, but for then, in that moment, perhaps she could just close her eyes . . . just for a little while.


	4. 4 Uninvited Guests and Terrible Mistakes

**Author's Notes:** So, here it begins. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this chapter, and I very much hope you find it as satisfying as I did. Reminder that I can be found hogwartsaheacanon on tumblr if you want to come and yell at me, or just talk Potter in general. I'm going to try to start doing aesthetics for each chapter as well—the one for this chapter is already on my tumblr, tagged #the phoenix and the cuckoo clock, as all future aesthetics/musings on the fic in general will be. Having nothing further to add (except that I may be posting another chapter or two later on as I start back at college tomorrow and it's gonna be pretty hectic), I present the next chapter...

* * *

Chapter 4:  
 _Uninvited Guests and Terrible Mistakes_

 _..._

 _ **15**_ _ **th**_ _**December 2016**_

By one o'clock in the afternoon, everyone was once again gathered in the library—aside from Hettie, who was sound asleep upstairs after a very dramatic run-in with a Doxy nest—engaged in hushed discussions of tactics or puzzling out intel from their informers. There was a heaviness to the quiet; a sense of futility since Hermione's announcement that had pervaded everything that morning since the moment of waking.

" _So . . . how do we fix it?"_

" _We don't. We can't. There's nothing to be done, nothing possible. It's an un-winnable situation. We've backed ourselves into a corner for the last thirty-five years, and now . . . there's nothing we can do. Nothing."_

The words washed over Lily again and again, like waves beating down a cliff face. They'd already lost. It was all for nothing.

Except it wasn't, couldn't be. Even if Hermione was right—which she was, always—it wasn't for nothing. Not while loved ones still lived. Not when Lily still had a family to protect. Maybe they wouldn't come out of this the winners, but she'd keep them all safe.

Teddy, Al, and Jay had stuck to her like glue from the second she woke up—not intrusively, they knew just how much space to give her—knowing she was liable to act impulsively in situations like the one they'd found themselves in. Harry's capture and Ginny's injury had resulted in Lily vanishing only a few weeks later, not to be seen nor heard from again for months. She supposed it was fair that her boys were nervous as to how she might react now.

No one addressed the question that was on everyone's mind—the "why are we still bothering" of their work they now knew was doomed to fail, but then they all knew the answer anyway: if they were going down, they'd go down fighting.

Of course, they were likely also racking their brains for a way around it, some means by which to alter their fate. After all, the Potters & Associates were known the world over for bending and breaking the rules of magic, but somehow Lily felt even her dad couldn't work his way around this one.

There was only one job that remained possible now, and that was for her to protect everyone until the end; to ensure no one allied with the Dark Arts and the "ideals" left behind by Voldemort could touch anyone under she held dear. A firm and recurrent tugging in her mind wanted to go and talk to the portraits for some objective advice—after all, it was hard to take a more impartial view of life than those who are dead—but she knew it wasn't possible. The portraits were back at Potter House in her dad's study, left behind as everything else had been when Death Eaters came to call.

But that mistake wouldn't happen again, not the way it had. What Hermione had told them had made Lily's precautions even more important than they'd been before. Things were clearly going to get much worse than they'd allowed themselves to imagine.

Lily was in her window seat again, sat back to back with Al as they both attempted to break into each other's minds via Legilimency. They had very firm agreements about such practice sessions: if someone got through someone else's defences, they were to pull out immediately. She and the boys might have been practically inseparable their whole lives, but it was a given that betraying someone's trust by rummaging through their mind in such a way was an absolute no-go. Lily's stomach flipped a little, almost costing her her boundaries when she considered how close that particular treachery might be to other things she'd done, but she forced it to the back of her mind and refocused her attention on Al and any gaps in his walls.

Once they'd been struggling with no winner for half an hour, they both pulled back, breathing heavily. The amount of physical energy the mental exercise took never ceased to catch Lily by surprise. Behind her, Al rested his forehead on the cold windowpane, his breath fogging up the glass. Lily was considering going to the kitchen in search of food and was about to ask the others whether they wanted anything when her brother's voice pulled her up short.

"What the _hell?"_ Al's words were quiet, a whisper more to himself than anyone else, and Lily was the only one who heard. She spun in her seat to peer out of the window, pushing her glasses back up where they'd slipped down her nose as her eyes settled on the black wrought-iron gates.

Something was moving out there.

There was about half a second to register the realisation before the world was rent by an ear-splitting blast, followed by a high-pitched scream like something ripping apart steel. Lily's eyes grew wide and with a stopped heart, she watched as a crimson ripple spread out through thin air just where the grounds ended.

Not a something, a _someone_. Many someones, and they were attacking the wards. They were here.

Lily was barely aware of her feet moving, of her hand delving into her opposite pocket where her Scatter Bag was shrunk down to withdraw her wand as she sprinted from the library to the front doors. She hardly registered the screams for her to stop, to wait, to come back as she flew out into the freezing December air and down the drive. She brought her wand down in a practised arc and the air thundered as the wards slammed inward, closing around the house itself just as she'd altered them to.

" _Sed I Fianto Duri, Sed I Protego Maxima, Sed I Protego Horriblis, Sed I Custodi In Laqueum._

 _Sed I Custodi In Laqueum. Except I, keep within the shield. Except I, Except I, Except I."_

The others were all at the doors already; she could hear them yelling, unable to follow, though the words themselves escaped her. They'd be figuring it out at that very second, realising exactly what she'd done.

She even heard the moment the penny dropped, and of course, it was her boys who got there first: After all, they knew her best.

"LILY! LILY, NO!"

"DON'T! LILY, COME BACK!"

" _LILY!"_

She didn't stop. She could see the intruders clearly now—a host of black robes gathered just inside the gates fronted by a tall, dark-haired witch with a sneer on her face and mania in her eyes. Polaris Lestrange. It couldn't really have been anyone else.

It had been wise of the witch's mother to have kept her existence a secret, though it was doubtless done less out of concern than of shame. Bellatrix, it seemed, had felt that the mothering of a child bellied her devotion to the Dark Lord, and it had taken until the dark armies began gathering again this time for anyone to learn of Polaris at all. Having seen Bellatrix all too many times in her Nightmares, Lily felt qualified to say that the resemblance between mother and daughter was horrifying.

Lily halted twenty feet in front of them, her feet sinking into the gravel as she stood firm and still. She realised she wasn't wearing shoes and had to stifle a slightly hysterical grin—her godmother would be proud. Back down the driveway, her family was still yelling, still screaming, still scrabbling to release the wards she'd raised to lock them inside the house where they'd be safe.

She had to keep them safe, like Dad would have done.

"Ah, little Miss Potter. Such a pleasure to see you again. Last time was under such unpleasant circumstances." Polaris's voice was polished compared to her mother's, but no less chilling.

Images of the woman grinning as her dad was manhandled into the cart flashed through Lily's mind, and she tightened her grip on her wand, but slid it into her pocket rather than raising it. She couldn't let them bait her into throwing the first spell; she had to stay calm.

"And these are looking so much more promising," Lily bit back, trying to keep her voice and expression steady while her heart was hammering like mad in her chest.

 _Quicker and easier than falling asleep, quicker and easier than falling asleep._

 _For 'Mione and Draco. For sweet, gentle Hugo, and bonkers Hettie, who is just so small. For Scorpius, with his green fingers and his Pepper Imps, who makes Al happy. For her boys, who held her through Nightmares, who had been the cause of the majority of her life's joy and laughter. For Al, in all his quiet wisdom; Jay, who was most like her and told her when to stop; and Teddy—Teddy with his kindness and his humour. His wonder. His brilliance. This was for them, and she'd see the others—the first Lily and James Potter, Sirius and Remus, Tonks and Uncle Fred—soon, for the first time outside of their portraits. They'd take care of her._

 _Quicker and easier than falling asleep._

Polaris held her arms out in front of the others—an indication to stay where they were—and was watching Lily with a cocked head sickeningly reminiscent of her mother in its terrifying near-childishness. "What's wrong, little Miss? Has your spark gone out? It was rather impressive last time; the burns in the grass, on the hands of your family. Did you _mean_ to do that? To hurt people who were only trying to protect you from yourself? Is that why they aren't coming to help you now? I must say I'm surprised they aren't all stumbling to your aid. The revered Order of the Phoenix really isn't living up to its reputation of fierce loyalty so far."

The words stung. Lily hadn't meant to hurt them, just as she hadn't meant to light the candles in the kitchen or set fire to those trees. Like she hadn't meant to burn that man to death in a back alley. The shame was rolling through her veins and she could feel her skin beginning to prick. She couldn't lose it now. Not _now_.

"Well sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm all you're going to get here, LeStrange: you aren't going anywhere near them."

Polaris's steel grey eyes darted back to the manor and presumably to the crowd of panicking people at the door, before her gaze transformed in sudden comprehension and Lily felt her stomach drop like a lead weight.

Stupid, _stupid_ mouth.

"Of course. I should have expected as much from the little lion cub: so eager to follow in your family's noble name; to throw your life away for others. Nobody touch her, that's what she wants," Lestrange added to the crowd behind, her tone conversational. "No. No, I think we'll have a little game first, hmm? A little fun? See if we can't get you to protect yourself. You might share her name, but I somehow doubt you're as strong as the infamous and honourable Lily Evans."

Any fool would have known then where the standoff was heading, and bile rose in Lily's throat as Polaris raised her wand. She held her ground. She'd felt it before, in her Nightmares. Frank and Alice Longbottom hadn't backed down, and neither would she.

Courage. _For them, for them._

" _Crucio_."

The raven-haired woman sounded almost bored as she cast the curse, but her apparent apathy did nothing to lessen the effects of the spell. Lily's knees went out from under her and a scream escaped past her lips unbidden. She was no stranger by now to the feeling of fire under her skin, but this was something different entirely. It was agony—pure, unadulterated, excruciating pain, and absolutely not within her control.

Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. Her knees and palms were sliced open and bleeding from where she'd collapsed onto the gravel, but the sensation didn't register at all as she knelt there panting—not after that.

She wasn't going to give in. They'd get bored before too long, and then they'd kill her; and once they'd taken her life, they would be unable to touch her family. Whatever was coming was worth it.

The red light flashed again, holding this time, and the weight of both physical and emotional agony pulled her back under. It was everyone she loved: her parents, her brothers, Teddy, all the cousins, aunts and uncles. Even Fred, Tonks, the first James and Lily, Remus and Sirius were there, just as she had known and loved them in paint.

Only now, they were cutting her open. They were tearing holes through her skin, down to the bones and straight through. They were kicking the wounds, beating her in boots that were made of razor blades as they spat on her body. Punishment, she knew, for all her failures.

She was trying to scream, desperately trying, but now there were holes in her lungs and she couldn't breathe. She was dying, but not quick enough. She'd failed them all, and she'd die hated by them. It was all her fault. She deserved it.

No. _No._

She didn't _deserve_ it; she _wanted_ it. She _had_ to fight to _not_ fight, and then they'd be safe. That was what she wanted. She tried with all her might to block at least the image, if not the pain, of them all beating down on her from her mind and focus. She just had to hold on. She could hold on.

The curse released again, and Lily had gone from kneeling to sprawled face down on the ground. She imagined that her thrashing had probably left large gashes on her face because her glasses were smashed (part of her was still absently thankful that she always used a flexible sticking charm to stop them falling off entirely) and there was blood trickling past her eye, but she couldn't force herself to move and wipe it off. She could barely even breathe from the residual agony in every cell of her body which, despite her loss of control to her limbs, was shaking violently.

"Tougher than I would have expected, little lion, but no matter."

The light, this time, was bright white, but Lily couldn't make out the incantation. A searing pain hit her in the side of the neck, and she realised it must have been a Scalding Curse. Despite the deadening effects of the _Cruciatus_ , she could _feel_ her skin blistering from the burn.

And she was furious.

Fire had been a constant companion of hers for as long as she could remember. The first truly controlled magic she had performed had been to light a candle in the living room at home, before she could even crawl. By the time she was five, she could get the candles in every sconce in a room to light as she entered with barely a bat of an eyelid. Then the Nightmares had started, and the fire began to act outside of her control as well as within it, triggered by upset or anger.

Of course, despite her increased control of it down the years, outbursts still happened as they had the day before, but even then it was hers. The fire was _hers,_ and Polaris's use of it against her had made Lily irrationally angry. She'd never been burned before in her life.

Her skin prickled harder; the blood in her veins almost sparking with the unnatural heat that had long ago stopped striking her as painful.

She held on.

If she lost control now, it was all for nothing, and they'd all be in danger. She didn't fool herself that the wards would hold for much longer, not with Hermione working to get them down, and unless they had protection from Lily when they _did_ fall, anything could happen. Any one of them could end up hurt, or taken, or dead.

Lily yelped as another stab of pain laced through the burn on her neck. Polaris grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head up to speak into her ear. "Which one of them will it hurt most to lose, hmm? To fail? Mummy's not here, of course. She's still with your grandmother in their hovel, recovering from Yaxley's little spell, isn't she? How about the grown-ups? One hears the Mudblood and the Traitor are family to you. Everyone will be _thrilled_ to see them—they've both made a few enemies amongst us since last time. People will enjoy killing them slowly."

The whisper was more of a hiss, but Polaris's similarity to her mother was playing up even further. She sounded positively delighted at the prospect of what she could do to Lily's family. Sounded _excited._

The grip Lily had managed to get on her determination lurched. The pain of the curses was poor leverage indeed when compared with the terror she felt at her family being threatened, even when that had been the obvious cause of the Death Eaters being there at all. Hearing it aloud was something different.

If the wards came down now, she'd be near useless. She was too weakened. She wouldn't be able to help them.

"Their children next. The oldest isn't around, I see. Pity. Word has it young Rose is quite the talent, just like her mother. Except the Mudblood bitch isn't _truly_ her mother, is she? She stole them from us. Rosie and her brother were born to dear colleagues of my own parents. What do you think it would take to convince them to take after their _real_ mother and father? They'd most certainly be valuable assets to us. Then there's Scorpius, Draco's own boy. A Slytherin, like your brother, Albus. Oh, you should see the way they cling to each other now, little cub: a picture perfect moment. Will they hold onto each other's hands when we come to kill them, or will they abandon each other to save themselves? It was Dumbledore who founded your little group, was it not? He believed so very strongly in the power of _love._ Do you believe, cub? Perhaps I'll keep you around to see for yourself. There's an infant too, we've heard. What to do with her . . . perhaps keep the Traitor and his Mudblood alive to watch her die. Yes, yes, that would be best."

Polaris broke off suddenly, and Lily's head shook in her grasp as the woman laughed. Manic. Deliriously thrilled. The Nightmares from the Death Chamber flashed through Lily's mind to the same laugh from Bellatrix when she killed Sirius. How on earth the woman managed to know so much about them all she couldn't fathom, but the thought carried little weight against the rest coursing, burning through her mind. Lily didn't know if she could keep her control much longer. She wanted Polaris to hurt, to suffer, to pay.

"Oh dear, it looks as though the other brother's angry with you. He's certainly making a lot of noise and fuss. Does he realise blasting the shield won't help him, or is he always that way when frustrated? Very Gryffindor of him, and my, but doesn't he look like dear Harry? I saw your father not too long ago." Polaris tsked. "Not doing so well I'm afraid, but then so few do against the Dementors. I wouldn't take your father's weakness personally, it really isn't his fault."

An involuntary growl escaped Lily and for the first time, she attempted to yank herself from the woman's grip. Polaris laughed again, and the other Death Eaters joined in. The Nightmares she'd had of Sirius's memories from Azkaban were some of the worst, and Lily both loathed and feared the place with a burning passion. The idea of her father—her brave, kind, brilliant dad—stuck in that foul pit seared a path through her mind; the anger behind the thought so strong it hurt. The tips of her fingers sparked with rage, her grasp on control slipping further. She bit down on her lip and could taste blood in her mouth.

"So you _do_ still have some spine? I had wondered. You don't precisely strike me as the sacrificial lamb type. Not so . . . pure as your namesake. And so angry! But anger is good, you know. It helps. You'd make a fine one for our ranks, given a little change of heart. I'm sure we could tempt one out of you in time. Oh now, how _terribly_ impolite of me, I've missed someone out. Edward Lupin, isn't it? The tall one with the odd hair. Yes, yes, you know who I'm talking about. A rather pretty face isn't he? I might just keep him for myself."

The sparks leapt from Lily's fingertips and she wrenched free, turning her head and biting down on Polaris's hand. _Hard_. She lasted only a few seconds before another brief flash of _Crucio_ had her letting go in favour of a scream. Her lungs felt as though they were collapsing again, and she struggled to catch her breath. Polaris rose to kick her body over onto her back before ducking down again and hauling her up by the by the wrist, twisting it across Lily's back to the point of snapping and yanking forward so they were face to face. The dark haired witch was grinning.

"Now that _really_ hit a sore spot, didn't it? Which would hurt you more then, cub? To know I had him, or to watch him die? I'd be quite happy with either option. Why don't you tell me which you'd prefer?"

Lily was shaking, furious, and barely keeping it together. Her arm was screaming even above the burn in her neck and the all-over pain lacing through her body from the _Cruciatus_.

"Touch them and I'll kill you. I'll kill every last one of you, and I promise I'll make it hurt." Lily's voice was like sandpaper, and not as threatening as she had intended. She sounded broken. Pitiful. Frightened.

She still meant every word.

Gryffindors were _brave_ , and when someone tried to pry away such an important part of who you were, it was like a physical wound. Just like an animal is at its most viscous when injured, a Gryffindor was never more dangerous than when they were truly afraid.

Polaris simply smirked and pulled sharply upward, twisting, and Lily's vision almost blacked out at the sensation of her bone splintering. She cried out and thrashed to release herself, but that only aggravated her arm more. She was stuck either way, and Polaris knew it, leaning closer to her ear to whisper more poison there.

The words never came.

There was an almost blinding flash of red light, the very shade Lily had been praying not to see.

Hermione was breaking through, and the first layer of wards was down, with the others surely about to follow. Lily had failed them; failed them all.

She could hear the Death Eaters tense behind her, but they dared not act without their leader's command. For a split second, no one moved; no one so much as breathed until a collective yelling started up again from the direction of the house.

Everything moved so fast, too fast for Lily's pain-addled brain to comprehend exactly what was happening. Polaris was suddenly stood two feet back from her, eyes hungry and shining, directed at the front doors as she barked an instruction at the others. The air seemed to whoosh as though through a tunnel as the Death Eaters Disapparated, landing just in front of the entrance. Without missing a beat, her boys had pushed in front of the others forming a barrier, wands raised in defiance. Her wonderful, brave, brave boys.

They didn't stand a chance.

" _NO!"_ The scream was enough to rip her throat raw, the horror and anger and shame slamming down on her as surely as the curses had done before, and everything was dark for a moment as the heat that had been building inside with an elastic-band tension snapped loose, more violently than she could ever recall it having done before. She managed to catch herself on her hand before her upper body crashed back down into the gravel, her head spinning madly and her heartbeat pulsing through her to every extremity. After a few moments, she managed to force her eyes open, hoping by Merlin, Morgana, Flamel, and Agrippa that she'd had enough energy to send every single one of the Death Eaters down in an inferno.

But it wasn't the Death Eaters on fire. Clearly, she had underestimated her own strength.

In that one burst of rage, the entire manor had gone up in flames—the manor and everyone still trapped by the wards inside.

Lily couldn't breathe. The was no sound, no sensation whatsoever; nothing in the world except the image of the three floors of ancient mansion ablaze against the pale winter sky, plumes of black smoke rising into an enormous cloud overhead. Even the Death Eaters were motionless, staring stunned at the destruction before them as their leader bent down to whisper in Lily's ear.

"Thank you. It isn't often someone does my job for me. The offer is still open to join us, when what remains of your little family cast you out for the monster you've just turned yourself into."

Polaris stepped back, yelling to her comrades then turning on her heel, all of them Disapparating together and leaving her alone.

She'd killed them. Every one of them. They were all dead and it was her fault. She had done this. Lily's body reacted without direction again, the agony from the curses and weakness from the vast expulsion of magic drowned out by the adrenalin as she pushed herself to her feet and ran head first towards the house and the open doors, the wards letting her pass without protest.

 _Except I, Except I_.

Through the haze and smoke and firestorm she could just make out a shoe, the body presumably lying on its back out of sight.

She screamed wordlessly, because there were no words. What words could there ever be for this? She was too close to the flames; they were licking at her clothes and the sleeve of her jumper caught, but she didn't care. She'd done this. It was her fault.

 _Quicker and easier than falling asleep, quicker and easier than falling asleep, quicker and easier than falling asleep. They didn't suffer. Please say they didn't suffer._

She repeated the mantra over and over as more of her clothing caught, conjuring up images of her painted loved ones in her mind.

 _Look after them, promise me you'll look after them, that they'll be ok._

She somehow doubted after what she'd just done that wherever souls went after death, she'd be allowed to see any of them again, though she selfishly hoped she would. The pain still refused to register as the flames took hold, and she simply stared at the shoe as the tears began to stream down her cheeks before evaporating directly away.

 _I'll do anything, please, this is my fault. I'll do anything, I'll make it right—just give me a chance. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry._


	5. Not Your Average Tuesday

**Author's Notes:** First off, last chapter I said that the chapter aesthetics on my tumblr (hogwartsaheadcanon) would be tagged #the phoenix and the cuckoo clock, whch is wrong: they're #the phoenix IN the cuckoo clock, so my apologies their: I ballsed up. As for the story, I hope you enjoyed that last chapter. I can't tell you how many times I wrote and rewrote that, how many different ways I imagined it going down, but I'm pretty pleased with the result and hope you are too. Now this chapter may be a little faulty: I edited it earlier and my internet cut out, so I lost the changes. I've tried to put them back in as best I can, but I may have missed things here or there, so my apologies in advance if that's the case. Thank you a million and one times if you've left a review, most especially Laisvega, Sableunstable and MissMorgan813, who have left reviews each chapter: you're fucking diamonds and I'm writing this for you. Now, let us proceed with chapter five...

* * *

Chapter 5:  
 _Not Your Average Tuesday_

 _..._

 _ **Tuesday 16**_ _ **th**_ _**September 1975**_

September was rarely a stellar month in terms of Scottish weather, and the third Tuesday into the Hogwarts academic year was making absolutely no effort to part with tradition. The temperamental and drizzly conditions kept the vast majority of students indoors, but—as per usual—four boys bucked the trend: the Marauders almost never made the cut for the vast majority. Taking shelter from any sudden downpours in the shadow of the castle wall, the four fifteen-year-olds stood, thick travelling cloaks turned up against the Scotch Mist, plotting.

"No, I understand what you're _saying,_ Sirius, but what _I'm_ saying is that it would be worth the extra trouble—in case you get caught—to use the potion rather than the spell. There's a clear rule against using Sticking Charms on other students, but nothing on using a potion to the same effect," Remus explained patiently, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette.

Sirius took a drag of his own, eyeing the prefect of the group pleadingly. "But it'll take _so_ much longer! Can't we just not get caught?"

James winced, and Peter coughed pointedly as Remus arched an eyebrow. "Can _I_ just not get caught? Absolutely. Can Pete? Most likely. Can you or James? Almost no chance whatsoever."

"We don't _get_ caught, Moony—we allow ourselves to be captured in order to take our rightful credit. There's a difference," James argued petulantly.

"And yet the outcome is the same. I'm trying to spare you a month of detention here."

"The potion's stronger, too," Peter added, his hands buried deep in his pockets and the scarf wrapped several times around his neck almost hiding him entirely, "and they can use a counter-curse on the spell. If we used the potion, they could be stuck there for _hours."_ The excitement was obvious in his tone and he began absently bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Remus nodded with a 'See? There you go' sort of expression, and James and Sirius appeared to consider both options as they lapsed into a comfortable silence, the two smokers puffing absently at their fags. James brought out his Snitch and Peter watched it whizzing back and forth with wide eyes. After several minutes, though, he became distracted from the display, scrunching his nose in distaste.

"I think someone's dropped ash on their robes again. Something's burning."

Sirius and Remus quickly shook out their uniforms, checking each other over for any signs of ignition.

"Neither of us. I'll bet you any money it's Moira-bloody-Finnegan," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. His scepticism regarding their fellow Gryffindor vanished, however, as he focused on something beyond James's shoulder, out toward the centre of the lawn. "Or it could be that. Which is… what, exactly?"

The others turned to look, unable to offer any explanation. A thin plume of dark grey smoke appeared to be emanating from thin air and was rapidly growing into a small cloud.

James's eyes widened. "We should check it out."

Remus rolled his eyes fondly and gave a wry smile, while Peter groaned, "Do we _have_ to poke everything with a stick?"

"Yes," James and Sirius replied simultaneously, and the smallest boy sighed.

They set off across the lawn toward the smoke cloud, which looked to be holding its own and growing thicker rather than drifting and spreading into the air. Unsure how to proceed, they simply studied it mutely for several moments, before James withdrew his wand from the back pocket of his trousers.

"What are you thinking, Prongs?" Sirius asked conversationally, as though mystery smoke clouds were an everyday occurence and their investigation only of the slightlest interest, and James paused for another moment.

"Vanishing? See if we can clear it for long enough to find a source?"

The cloud was staying fairly steady at about two metres high and perhaps one and a half square at the base, mushrooming higher up. Remus nodded his agreement with James's plan, and the later cast an _Evanesco_ at the smoke, which appeared to have no effect whatsoever.

James scowled. "I can do Vanishing Spells in my sleep."

"It's not you; it didn't even shift. I don't think it _can_ be vanished," Remus replied thoughtfully, and James seemed to relax a little at the reassurance that none of his friends doubted him or his abilities.

They pondered for a few more moments before the smoke suddenly flared hot, and there was a flash of deep, orangey red within it indicating a fire. They all jumped back, and the smoke sucked in on itself as though vanishing into a vacuum, clearing the air.

"Oh, bloody crapping Merlin!"

"Fucking hell!"

"Well, that's an unexpected turn."

Only Remus appeared to have the wherewithal to react to the situation rather than comment on it, rushing forward to kneel down beside the girl.

The girl who had just appeared on Hogwarts grounds, quite literally in a puff of smoke.

"Someone needs to get a teacher. Pete, do you reckon you could go and find someone?"

It was no big secret that, of the four of them, Peter dealt worst with injuries and blood. Often, post-moon visits to Remus in the hospital wing resulted in him turning quite pale and asking to be excused. As such, he nodded at Remus's suggestion, his expression distinctly freaked, and he ran back towards the castle in search of help. James appeared to snap out of his startled daze and closed the short distance between himself, the girl, and Remus and Sirius.

"Merlin's bollocks, who is it? Is she alive? Oh, Merlin, god it's not… I think I'm going to be sick." James had evidently noticed the particular deep orange shade of the girl's hair, and his eyes went round with horror.

"It's not Evans, mate; it's not. And she's not dead, though Morgana knows how. What the fuck's happened to her?" Sirius shook his head, as unable as the others to makes sense of what lay before them.

The girl in question looked as though she'd wandered out of an explosion, and not the kind the Marauders liked to cause when they had time to spare. She was filthy from head to toe, her clothes tattered and marred with burns, shoes missing entirely. One of the scorched-away sections in the leg of her Muggle jeans revealed a long, deep gash that was seeping blood. Part of her neck looked like it had been gouged out by a rabid animal, uncomfortably reminiscent of some of Remus's post-moon injuries. Her hands were blackened and bloody, and the glasses which sat askew on her face were shattered. Sirius was right: by all appearances, she should have been dead, though even as they fretted blindly over her, her back arched off the ground, and she began to cough as if trying to expel her lungs themselves up her throat.

"It's alright, you're okay, someone's coming, you're going to be fine," Remus spoke soothingly over the hacking fit, though as soon as it abated, it transformed into laboured, desperate attempts to catch her breath. James's hand went to her arm—his typical comforting gesture—but she recoiled. The set of her shoulders was pulled down, squared and almost defiant, though her head was hung and her whole body shook violently like an autumn leaf in a storm.

Sirius removed his outer robes and bundled them into a ball, catching Remus's eye and nodding to the bleeding leg. "That needs pressure on it till she gets to the hospital wing." He looked at the girl, "This is going to hurt like a Bludger to the skull, but it's going to help stem the bleeding, all right?" He gave her no time to respond before pressing the balled up fabric down firmly on the leg. They expected a scream of agony, or perhaps an excessive and violent chain of expletives, but nothing came; she didn't even seem to notice what should have been a horrendous amount of pain.

James gave a slight but genuine smile. "Tough nut you are—Pads or I would be sobbing our eyes out after that."

Sirius shot James a sharp glare, but the girl still made no response beyond continued shaking, and James attempted to survey the rest of the damage. Her left arm was cradled in front of her, but even beneath her jumper, there was clearly something very wrong with it.

"Merlin alive, what the fuck have you done to that?"

No-one truly expected a response, but to their surprise she opened her mouth in an attempt to speak.

"Broken," was all she said, sounding like her throat was lined with gravel.

James extended a hand toward the damaged limb, but again the girl withdrew sharply, and the air gave a violent crack, sparks biting at his fingers as though he'd just come up against an electrically charged ward. Remus's expression immediately took on an edge of wariness, and he held a hand up to James, fixing him with a look warning not to get too close again. James's eyes widened with alarm.

"What was that? I swear it wasn't me."

"No, it wasn't. She's… it's her magic defending her. A distress reaction to protect her, like a magical shock or adrenaline. Just be careful, or you'll end up hurting her _and_ yourself."

James looked horrified. "No, but… I didn't… I wasn't going to _hurt_ her—"

Sirius cut him off. " _We_ know that mate, but I'm not sure she's in much of a state to make that distinction right now."

The three boys all turned back to the girl, who was still quivering with unfocused eyes.

"Why's she doing that?" Sirius asked, his voice strained.

"The shaking?" James clarified, eyeing the girl with obvious discomfort. "A lot of things can cause it, can't they Remus?"

Remus nodded in agreement. "And judging by the rest of her, I'd guess whatever the reason, it isn't one of the better ones."

Sirius swallowed hard, hit by a sensation akin to a lead weight dropping into the pit of his stomach. He hoped very badly that he was wrong, but he couldn't deny that the girl's shaking looked like something he'd seen—or rather experienced—once before.

As they continued to watch the girl, her face tightened slightly into a frown, and slowly, quaking, she shifted her right hand so it was lying over the sleeve of her broken arm.

James flinched. "I wouldn't do that, Brandy."

Under normal circumstances, both Sirius and Remus would have rolled their eyes at James's universal nickname for gingers. However, at that particular moment, they were far too busy agreeing with him that touching what looked to be a nastily broken bone in any way was most unwise.

She ignored the warning, her eyes scrunching closed, and there was a chorus of "Nonononono!" as she muttered, _Episkey._ The sickening sound of bones snapping back into place was audible even over the boys' exclamations, accompanied by a very disturbing shift of her sleeve fabric. She still barely reacted, flinching slightly and opening her eyes back into the vacant stare from before.

James looked absolutely scandalised. "Are you mental!? You should be under about three phials of industrial strength Sleeping Draught for that!"

Remus wasn't sure whether to be more shocked by the insanity of simply Episkey-ing such a large break without, as James had suggested, large quantities of sedatives, or the fact she had done so while hideously injured, yet still without the aid of a wand.

She didn't reply to the aspersion against her sanity, and the boys felt mightily relieved to hear the sound of rapid, worried speech behind them. They turned to see Peter trailing McGonagall across the grass.

"Who is it? Let me through, let me through."

"She's off her rocker—just Episkied her own arm," James offered somewhat unhelpfully, although he clearly considered it important information.

McGonagall shuffled Remus out of the way and knelt next to the girl. Her expression turned wary and troubled on top of the concern as she eyed the stranger and realised that she was, in fact, a stranger. She schooled her features and addressed James briskly, "Go to the headmaster's office and alert Professor Dumbledore as quickly as possible. The password is Acid Pops."

James nodded and, glancing once more at the girl, jumped up and sped back towards the castle.

"The three of you with me please—I'm afraid you'll have to carry her, Black."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Professor," Remus warned. "James tried to take a look at her arm before and got zapped, and he wasn't even touching her."

McGonagall looked over the shaking girl again, her frown deepening, and nodded as she carefully removed her wand from the deep green sleeve of her robes. She sent a subtle flick in the direction of the girl without saying a word, and immediately the quaking lessened, though her expression grew, if possible, even more vacant.

"What did you do?" Sirius asked, a note of suspicion colouring his tone.

"A simple Calming Spell that will prevent the agitation of her magic, and thus any injury to you. Come along, Black: to the hospital wing."

Sirius was not well known for his obedience, but when it came to the particular tone his Head of House was using, he was generally disposed to doing as he was told. He knelt down to the girl's left opposite Remus and the professor, casting his friend a slightly panicked glance, though Remus simply gave him an encouraging smile and nod. Taking the best care he could not to agitate any obvious injuries, Sirius hooked his arms around the girl's back and under her knees—feeling very uneasy about the leg that was no longer being pressurised—and lifted her from the ground. Once again, she seemed to be entirely oblivious to the surrounding world.

She was small—the girl—only about five-foot-three or four by his estimate, though now her face was so much closer, he supposed she was around their age. The thought made his stomach turn: what could someone the same age as he and his friends have done to end up like this? She was practically boneless in his arms, though as he went to follow McGonagall, Peter, and Remus into the castle, she shifted her weight so that she was leaning on his shoulder, bringing her right hand across her body to cling to a fistful of his robes. The action reminded Sirius sickeningly of his brother after a nightmare. Vulnerable. Frightened. He tightened his grip as he walked.

It had been several minutes of tense silence with Sirius trailing about ten feet behind the others when she first attempted to speak more than a single word.

"Knew you'd be here… take care of us…" She broke off again in a brief fit of coughing, then continued as her eyes drifted closed, "Tried to help. Wanted you to be proud. Tried to be brave…"

Sirius's chest contracted painfully at her muffled speech. One should always be wary of judging by appearances, of course, but the girl looked barely capable of hurting a fly, and she'd clearly put herself in the path of significant danger in order to "help", whatever she might have been trying to help with; and she'd ended up like _this_. She'd tried to do what she thought was the right thing, and she was bloody near dead as a result. She deserved whatever small comfort he could provide.

"You _were_ brave, Brandy, really brave. We're all proud of you, and we're gonna take care of you, yeah? We'll make sure you're okay, don't you worry. You'll be all right."

…

"… I tried to vanish it, but it didn't shift an inch—and normally I can vanish things fine—but before we tried anything else, it sort of… flared up? Then sucked itself away into nowhere, and she was just lying there. She looks awful, all bloodied up and filthy, massive cut on her leg, mashed up neck, broken arm. She fixed _that_ herself. Mental. You don't just fix breaks like that conscious. Anyway, we sent Peter to find someone, and when Minnie—Professor McGonagall, even—got there, she told me to come and get you. She's not from school; none of us recognised her. Though she looks the age for it. I don't understand how it could have happened. I mean you can't just _turn up_ at _Hogwarts_ ," James spoke rapidly over his shoulder to the headmaster as they neared the hospital wing, and Dumbledore nodded with a frown at what he heard.

"I cannot say I understand either, Mister Potter, though I have no doubt the details of the situation shall make themselves clear soon enough. Did she give you a name, perchance?"

"No, nothing. She didn't even swear when Sirius crushed her leg, and it was cut up worse than… well, it needed pressure. Moo—ahem, _Remus_ , tried to speak to her—I think he was just trying to keep her from passing out. Reckon she'd lost a lot of blood. She didn't say anything except 'broken' about her arm, and she kept shaking. She just wouldn't stop."

They had, by that point, reached their destination and, with a flick of the headmaster's hand, the heavy doors to the hospital wing swung open. The three boys, McGonagall, and Madam Pomfrey were all stood several feet back from the bed where the girl rested with matching expressions of mingled horror and worry. James practically sprinted to his friends, while Dumbledore swooped directly to the bedside, gesturing for Poppy to do the same.

He concluded that it was just as bad as, if not worse than, James had described. Dumbledore had rather hoped the boy had been exaggerating as was his habit, but the strange child lying unconscious before him did indeed look as though she might well have been through a war zone. With his infamous calm intact, he looked across the bed to the mediwitch, who was terribly and understandably irate.

"Have you had the opportunity to perform any checks on her, Poppy?"

"No, no, we thought it best to wait until you arrived, Headmaster."

"I appreciate your consideration, though do feel free to proceed with the necessary diagnostic measures. I should like to stay to hear your findings if that would be acceptable to you?"

Poppy nodded and raised her wand to mutter various spells under her breath as she swept it through the air over the girl's form. The following minutes of tense silence were beginning to feel like years until the witch broke off her actions with a gasp and almost dropped her wand. The boys didn't miss a beat in striking up a chorus of "What is it? What happened? What's wrong with her?'" though they were immediately cut off with an angry "Shh!" from their Head of House.

"What is it, Poppy?" Dumbledore asked gently, but she looked over to the boys rather than reply.

"You said she was shaking?"

"Yes," Remus nodded. "All over, and quite violently."

"Why? What did you find?" Peter asked, his tone stubborn with trying to keep the tremble out of it, though James evidently saw through this and rested a reassuring hand on the smaller boy's shoulder.

Poppy looked back to Dumbledore. "I believe this girl, among other things, has been subjected to the Cruciatus Curse, which would account for any shaking or shuddering."

Three of the boys started up again, this time with a string of swearing, exclamations of shock—anger from James and Remus, and terror from Peter. Sirius said nothing, a rarity in itself, but had paled significantly, and appeared incapable of looking away from the unconscious redhead.

McGonagall made no move to stop them this time, releasing an appalled gasp of her own.

Dumbledore merely nodded gravely. "And what of the rest of her injuries?"

"The wound to her leg has many similar magical traces to a splinching, but it doesn't quite fit right. The boys related an arm injury which she apparently Episkied, but it's only partially healed—a rather nasty spiral fracture judging by the damage to both the bone itself and the shoulder muscles. I imagine someone twisted her arm up behind her back. There are some minor but unpleasant cuts and bruises to her hands, knees and even her face—I would say from a fall onto rocks or some other similar surface, and she has bitten through her lower lip."

"Her neck?" Dumbledore asked, gesturing to the vivid, bloody mess of flesh there.

"Looks like she's been mauled.," James muttered.

"No, Mister Potter, it is not a mauling, but a burn. I suspect the work of a Scalding Spell. In which case, she is lucky it didn't burn a hole in her windpipe, or else she might have found herself unable to draw breath and suffocated."

"There is nothing lucky about this," McGonagall said, shaking her head.

"Indeed not," Dumbledore agreed. "Shall you be able to treat her here, Poppy?"

"Yes, though even without the rest of the damage, she'll have to stay in for several days just to recover from the use of the…"—she paused and coughed to clear her voice—"…the Cruciatus. She'll be exhausted and exceedingly sensitive to any physical action without heavy medication. For a brief while after the curse is cast, the level of pain almost numbs the victim to most other things—only the harshest of injury would register at all—but once that has passed, the body will protest against the slightest sensation. Even the lightest brush of clothing would be agonising, so the amount of Pain-relief Potions I'll be giving her would make it extremely unwise for her to so much as get up from bed."

Dumbledore and McGonagall nodded, well acquainted with the intoxicating effects of strong medical potions. Mentally pulling herself together, Minerva turned to her students with a stern but not unkind expression.

"I shall not, on this occasion, be asking what you four were doing out of doors in such grim conditions, as it is this once rather lucky you were. Ten points to each of you for your responsible handling of the situation, and I shall inform your professors that you are excused from lessons for the remainder of the day. I am trusting you all, perhaps unwisely, to be discreet about what you have seen. Whatever this poor girl has just been through, I doubt she'll be too keen on having interlopers coming in at all hours of the day to ask her about her brush with an Unforgivable."

The boys nodded in understanding, their eyes darting between their professor and the girl.

"Can we stay here? Make sure she's all right when she wakes up?" James asked, and the others made muffled noises of agreement, although Peter looked as though he were determinedly pushing through queasiness for the sake of the others, and would really rather be anywhere else.

"I'm sorry but no," Madam Pomfrey cut in almost immediately. "She won't be awake for several hours yet, and even then she will be in absolutely _no_ condition to be chattering away with the rowdy likes of you lot. No, Mister Black, my decision is final. I shall send word to you once she comes around if that will ease your concern, but I cannot and will not have you rattling around my ward and disturbing her before she is better."

All four Marauders looked put out, but they'd learned better than to argue with Poppy when she was so set on something.

"You won't let her leave again without us seeing her? You swear?" James had crossed his arms, looking for all the world like a petulant child. It was almost endearing, but Poppy was immune.

"I will make sure. Now, I want you out—all of you, professors and headmasters included. This poor child needs my attention, and I cannot afford any distraction. Out out out, come along."

Poppy shepherded everyone from the ward with sweeping gestures of her arms that appeared to vaguely alarm the boys but made Dumbledore and McGonagall smile. They had known the mediwitch long enough to be very well aware just how fiercely protective she was of her ward; she would battle a dragon wandlessly before she allowed anyone in her care to come to harm.

"I shall be back this evening to check on her, Poppy. I hope that your work proceeds without crisis," the headmaster addressed her with a smile but was met with little more than a distracted nodding as she threw the doors closed behind them.

"Back to your dorm now, boys, don't dither. And do not make me regret my leniency with regards to your lessons by wandering blindly about the castle. You have a Transfiguration essay due on Thursday, which I am under no illusions that you two"—she narrowed her eyes at James and Sirius, who smirked shamelessly, though not so brightly as usual—"will have completed yet. Now off with you all."

They didn't argue, about-turning to head up the corridor, heads drawn close in together and hushed, rapid-fire discussion drifting back behind them.

"They're doing rather well, aren't they? A long way yet to go, I feel, but certainly growing in the right direction. They are good for one another. Who would have thought, little Pettigrew, the Potter and Black scions, and Remus Lupin the lycanthrope," Dumbledore mused to McGonagall with twinkling eyes and a small, satisfied smile.

Minerva snorted a laugh. "Oh, if anyone would have thought it, I imagine you did. Most likely years in advance, knowing you as I do."

"Far too well, my dear, far too well," he replied with a chuckle, taking his deputy's arm as they made their way down the hall.


	6. Questions of Identity and Trust

**Author's Notes:** So, chapter six here we come! Know many of you aren't Dumbledore fans, but bear with me on this chapter—it needs to be done. I don't think I have a great deal to say about this chapter, itself, other than generic reminders: as always, you can come and find me at hogwartsaheadcanon on tumblr—I'd love to hear from you, you'd make my day :) Reviews are excellent rare morsels—just a word or two to let me know how you're finding the story goes so far towards my motivation, plus the delicious bonus of knowing you are one of the less than 3% bestowing this most glorious of gifts, which makes you super special xD I'll quit rambling now and let you get on with what you're here for x

* * *

Chapter Six:  
 _Questions of Identity and Trust_

 _..._

 ** _Thursday 18_** ** _th_** ** _September 1975_**

Lemon. Lily could smell lemon. Or… no, not lemon—Dittany. The combination of the scent and the particular angle at which she was propped up against slightly scratchy pillows made it easy to discern she was in a hospital without even opening her eyes. What was she doing in hospital? She'd been at Malfoy Manor, her boys had put her to bed and curled up with her, all of them overwhelmed by everything Hermione had told them.

They'd lost the war in '81. They weren't going to win another round.

The crushing hopelessness washed over her again, but she tried desperately to push it aside. How had she ended up in a hospital from there? And why on earth would they take her anywhere _near_ a hospital anyway? The blows-outs never injured _her,_ and St Mungo's was no safer than the Ministry these days. Draco was a strong Healer, as was Rose if they'd _needed_ to call her home, but Lily had been absolutely fine—if tired—when the boys had put her to bed. _Hospital_ , though? It was madness.

Ignoring the all-body ache that hummed _everywhere,_ Lily inched her eyes open and groaned in frustration. Her vision was a white blur and completely indiscernible from any other white blur she had encountered in her life. Someone had left her glasses off, which set a twinge of panic in her chest. If someone had forgotten to put her glasses back on her, then her boys couldn't be there: they _never_ forgot about her glasses.

Flipping her hand palm up in her lap, which stung but not too badly, she directed a strong thought through it. Sure enough, there was a slight rush of air, and her glasses settled themselves in her hand as intended. There was a twinge in her head at the use of magic, though, which worried her considerably. What the hell had happened?

Placing the glasses on her face was an uncomfortable and slow affair as Lily inched her hands up, trying not to disturb the stabbing pains which seemed ready to leap through her at the slightest provocation, but she got there in the end. She sighed with relief as she slowly returned her arms to her sides and blinked her vision back into focus, glancing around her with minimal head movement in an attempt to identify her surroundings.

And Albus Dumbledore was sat next to her bed.

" _Fucking hell!"_

Lily jumped several inches off the mattress—an action which was swiftly followed by a further litany of swearing at the searing pain caused by the movement. Once she'd managed to still herself again—and the world had stopped swimming around her—she looked back to the bearded wizard in purple robes. He was watching her with bright blue eyes—calm but with an infamous glint to them that was instantly recognisable, despite the translation from the oil-paint versions she'd seen to flesh-and-blood.

Definitely Dumbledore. Definitely impossible. Definitely going mad.

"Good afternoon," he said, smiling amiably as if they were passing in a park on a pleasant day. "How are you feeling? Judging by your creative wording, I hazard a guess toward 'Not so well', but I must say you are looking a great deal better than you were when you were found. You've been unconscious for two days, I'm afraid."

Unconscious for two days? In the hospital wing of Hogwarts (which was now clearly where she was—she knew it all too well)? With _Albus Dumbledore?_ She had to be dreaming. Granted, this was a long way from her normal dream pattern, but there was no other explanation. Well, that wasn't true.

Lily attempted to list off possibilities in her mind: head trauma, Legilimency, curse, bad batch of Dreamless Sleep (not that she ever took it anymore), death. Could she be dead? Was this what happened after death? One returned to Hogwarts, greeted by the most infamous headmaster in the school's history? If she'd died, she'd remember it happening, surely? She'd only been in bed; she couldn't have just snuffed it _in her sleep_ …

"What in sod's name is going on?" she asked, rather bluntly. If she _were_ dead, she'd rather just be told.

"Well, we were rather hoping _you_ might answer that. You see, it isn't every day someone quite literally appears out of a puff of smoke on Hogwarts grounds."

For several moments she could do nothing more than stare, running the nonsensical words over and over in her mind. "…Appeared. In a puff of smoke," Lily repeated out loud, to clarify that that was, indeed, what had been said.

"Quite so. It was rather an unpleasant shock for the boys who found you—as I said, you were in rather a bad way. Although, I'm sure you remember."

"Uh, no, actually not. _Really_ not."

The man who couldn't _possibly_ actually be Dumbledore arched an eyebrow. "No? One would imagine you would recall sustaining such injuries—"

"Injuries? Wha—but I'm fine! I mean, I feel like I've been hit by the Hogwarts Express, but otherwise fine. I was… I was _asleep._ And then I wake up here—where I was _not,_ by the way. I've not been anywhere near Hogwarts since _July—_ and you're sat there acting like it's perfectly normal that a man who has been very much dead since _1997_ would be here, by the side of a bed I shouldn't even be in, claiming non-existent injuries, so if I'm dead you really need to find a better fucking way of welcoming people to the afterlife, because this is really rather _shite_."

He didn't even look flustered. "And what year is it now, if I have, as you claim, been dead for a great number of them?"

"You're joking. Really, are you having a laugh? Is this Jay? What, you've… I don't know, found an ancient hair of the late great Dumbledore and thought it would be such a fucking laugh to pretend I'm _dead…_ did you pay _no_ attention to what 'Mione said? This is not the _sodding time_ to be pissing about and—"

"My dear, I feel we are on rather different pages. Might I ask again what year you consider it to be?"

Lily was getting more hacked off by the minute. "Consider it to… It's not a matter of opinion; it _is_ December, 2016, and I _really_ want to know what I'm doing here when I should be back at the manor to monitor the wards and—"

He cut her off again, "I feel we may have located the source of the confusion. You see, if you were to look out of the window, which I would not recommend considering your present state of fragility—Poppy will be along soon with a Pain Draught for that, little consolation as it may presently be—you would notice that the weather is not fitting of a Scottish December. This is because it is currently the 18th of September, and the year is 1975."

Lily stared at him again, eyes narrowed, waiting for him to burst into laughter and say he was just joking, or for the Polyjuice Potion to wear off and him to turn back into Jay (it _had_ to be Jay—no one else would even vaguely have considered this a good idea. Why on earth had Al and Teddy not stopped him?) so she could break his nose again. It wasn't funny: she was really starting to panic.

"That's absolute bollocks. It's 2016, has been all pissing year, 1975 was…" she paused, feeling like a bit of a tit when she had to double check her calculations on her fingers. Arithmancy was great and everything, but sometimes she really cursed Hogwarts's lack of basic Maths on the curriculum. "… forty-one years ago, Albus Dumbledore is _not_ alive, and I would very much like to understand what in the name of Merlin's wand is _bloody well happening!"_

The pretender said nothing, simply handing her a copy of what appeared to be the _Prophet_ from where it had sat on the foot of her bed.

 _18_ _th_ _of September, 1975._

"Well, congratulations, you've found a backdated edition. If this was what started this whole farce, I'm going to find whoever gave it to you and hex their knob to the floor."

Fake-Dumbledore's continued lack of reaction was beginning to cause Lily doubt. Even under Polyjuice, Jay's poker-face was absolutely shocking, and he couldn't lie to save his life (he tried of course, often—it just never worked). The concept of it _not_ being Jay, however, made her very uncomfortable indeed.

"If you require further proof, I suggest perhaps a Tempus Charm?" he offered, reaching into one of his extensive sleeves.

Lily had to admit, the costuming was bang on: the sleeves were almost as well known as the beard and the eye twinkle. She was caught somewhere between anxiety and relief when he withdrew _her_ wand; she was naturally glad to know where it was but displeased in the extreme to see it in the hands of someone else, especially someone whose identity she did not trust for a moment.

"Now, I must request that you not point this at me." His eyes twinkled again with his words as he withheld her wand from her, clearly expecting some form of promise. She simply glared and held out her hand expectantly, and the first sign of surprise flickered in his gaze when the wand jumped from his hand to hers with no word or obvious gesture on her part. Ignoring his questioning eyebrow, she—with a little indignation—did as he had suggested and cast a Tempus Charm, fully anticipating the date above the familiar glowing clock to read somewhere around _15_ _th_ _/12_ _th_ _/2016._

 _18_ _th_ _/9_ _th_ _/1975 ._

And Tempus Charms were never wrong—they just weren't. Unless someone had tampered with her wand, which they hadn't: she would have been able to feel the difference immediately, not to mention the combination of materials from which it was constructed made it both loyal and volatile. Al had tried to mess with it once, and the subsequent disaster had left him on three potions a day for two weeks afterwards. No, her wand was in perfect condition, which meant that the charm was right.

And that just wasn't possible.

"I can't… this can't be. It can't be done. Forty-one years… but even twenty almost killed that last person daft enough to try, and that was with the most recent Time-Turners, but they're in the Ministry…"

Lily couldn't think of another way it could have happened, but it _was_ impossible. Time-Turners just didn't go back that far, and they didn't even have one at the manor. It didn't make sense—none of it made sense. There was no explanation other than time travel for her to be here. She was certain she wasn't concussed or dreaming, a quick probing of her own mind discounted Legilimency, and she really was fairly sure she wasn't dead, so time travel was the only remaining possibility.

But it was _impossible._

She turned a narrow-eyed glare back on the man, who seemed pleased she had followed his suggestion of the charm.

"If you're Dumbledore, prove it."

"I would have thought this being my school and you having at least the advantage of recognising me, it would be down to you to prove _your_ identity first."

"I'm not proving a thing until I'm sure you're who you say you are."

He smiled, eyes twinkling with an amusement she couldn't say she found entirely appropriate to the situation, and nodded. "Very well. How might I go about assuring your trust—in my being myself, at least."

Lily considered, recalling what she could of the famous headmaster. "I know what form your Patronus takes, and most Dark wizards can't cast them. That would be a good start," she said, nodding to the sleeve where she presumed his own wand was hidden.

She had been right, and her eyes widened as he withdrew it: The Elder Wand. It certainly _looked_ how her father had described it. With a wordless flick, a white light appeared and morphed into the form of a phoenix.

It was him. It really was.

"I don't understand. I _can't be here._ I _can't,"_ she muttered, palms spread uselessly upward on the bed either side of her.

The wizard's eyes softened, and he replaced his wand before settling his elbows on his knees and leaning forward slightly in contemplation. The near boyish posture on such an aged man almost made her laugh. Almost.

"I can only imagine that whatever trauma you have been through, you must be awfully confused. Many witches and wizards far older and more experienced than yourself have been terribly addled after injurious events in their lives."

Lily narrowed her eyes for a few seconds as she processed what the headmaster was implying, and her jaw dropped open of its own accord when her presently sluggish mind caught up to her.

"I'm not _traumatised_ ," she bit out, scandalised. _Traumatised_ was what Victoire had been when Dominique had fixed all that pretty blonde hair to the bed frame with a permanent sticking charm. _Traumatised_ was how Lily had felt the first few times she'd walked in on Al and Scorpius going at it like rabbits (though after a while even _that_ lost its shock value). She wasn't _traumatised,_ she was being _perfectly_ fucking reasonable considering the situation at hand. "Look, I'll give that a fair chunk of my memory seems to be absent, but I swear this is _not my time._ I was in _2016;_ I'm sixteen in a month; I'm a Hogwarts student, for Merlin's sake! Check me! Test me, Legilimise me, whatever you need to do, do it. I know who I am, and I know where and when I'm from," she pled, her voice rising slightly with panic—much to her mortification—concerned enough by the situation to ignore the backhanded jab at her age and ability, something that usually would have warranted an imaginative display of just how capable she was.

The headmaster frowned slightly, then straightened up with a look of focus. Lily flinched at the feeling of someone invading her mind—the practice with her brothers over the years had made her hypersensitive and, despite how gentle Dumbledore was clearly trying to be, it was uncomfortable.

Lily tried to pull up specific memories: her and the boys at school, her Sorting, their self-made dorm, an escapade to Muggle London for New Year with a flashing neon sign reading _2014,_ a Ministry function and talking to Minister Shacklebolt—anything which indicated, beyond doubt, that she was telling the truth. It went on for several minutes, and when Dumbledore finally pulled from her mind, his eyes opened wider than before, swimming with curiosity, fascination and perhaps a little anxiety.

She could relate.

"Incredible."

"Really quite disturbing right now, actually."

He hummed thoughtfully, leaning back in his seat—he'd evidently conjured it: the deep maroon velvet armchair was entirely incongruous to the setting. Perhaps she really was just going mad—and bridging his fingers.

"As you have correctly observed, such a jump in time should be quite impossible. Yet there is no doubt—your memories have not been tampered with, apart from that which you say is absent, and they show a time many years from this one. This, at least, might explain the curious wound to your leg: akin to a Splinching, Poppy said. I should imagine that such a significant jump in time might cause similar damage to over-enthusiastic Apparition. Though, I must now review my former opinions; we considered the damage to your person most terribly unfortunate, but now I wonder at how you escaped so relatively unscathed."

Lily nodded, feeling very much like she was going to be sick. "He… the man who tried to jump twenty years with a Time-Turner… when he came back, they say he'd lost a leg, an arm, sections of his skull and torso, a lung… it was only because they'd had the sense to have so many Healers on hand that he lived, though, you know… he never walked again, and it was a 'several bottles of potions a day for the rest of his life' type thing."

"Yet you have travelled twice as far and suffered nothing more than a gash to your leg—unpleasant, certainly, and it resulted in a great deal of blood loss, but you are not lacking any limbs or internal organs. Your other injuries, I suspect, were not inflicted by your journey."

Lily stilled, eyeing the infinitesimal change in his expression and wondering whether she really wanted to ask. "What happened to me? What was wrong?"

Dumbledore sighed. "Aside from your leg, you had a rather aggressive burn on the side of your neck, which I am afraid will scar. A Scalding Curse, Poppy believes. There were several other more minor burns, cuts, bruises… and evidence of the Cruciatus Curse."

Her stomach turned and she had to swallow down bile. If she'd been Crucio'ed, then something _had_ to have happened at the manor. Only a Death Eater would have used the curse on her, which meant they'd been there; they'd attacked. Had her wards worked? Had they been safe? Her heart broke when she realised with her evidently still being alive, her plan had failed. They had no sacrificial protection from her in her own time, and she was no longer there for them. She was decades away, unable to do a thing. She scrabbled to recall a single snippet of the battle she was certain must have happened, but there was just nothing there. She didn't even know if they'd made it through, couldn't think what could possibly have happened for her to end up in this situation. Had the Death Eaters sent her back? But that would serve no purpose to them. Even if they'd conducted the same arithmancy as Hermione, sending her back to six years before the turning point would be exactly what they _didn't_ want—

And it hit her.

"Oh my Merlin. _Oh my Merlin,_ I can do it. I've got six years; I can… I can change everything!" She exclaimed, an odd and faintly hysterical laughter bubbling past her lips while this time _Dumbledore_ looked notably concerned.

"My dear, whatever you feel you might be able to do, to alter time is surely an incredibly great risk—interfering with a fragile continuum—"

"No, no!" Lily began, forcing herself to ignore the pain of movement as she sat up and gesticulated with her hands, eager to explain. "No, one of my dad's best friends from school—she's like an aunt to us, and she's a _genius_ —one of the things she did significant study into was time _._ It doesn't work the way people think it does in this era: only certain parts can be altered, and you have to change _each part_ specifically, or the things that come after will still find a way to happen. It's like… unpicking stitches, you see? Just because you've opened some at one point on a seam, doesn't mean it changes every other stitch down the line. And I can… one of the last things I remember was her telling us, talking about some arithmancy she's been working on. If it's 1975 now, then in six years… something's going to happen, or at least in my time it had. If I let it happen _this time,_ then it'll set us down a specific path, and our whole world will fall apart. It doesn't matter _what_ is changed after that: we're doomed, categorically and unavoidably, but if I _can_ change things, then it opens up options. It means we could win. We could _win_."

Dumbledore had leant forward again, eyes blazing more than twinkling through his half-moon spectacles. "Win what, precisely?"

She felt her own face darkening. "You of all people know what's coming; you have to."

He looked… sad. His shoulders slumped a little and he nodded. "Indeed, I do. _War_ is coming, heralded by the man who was once Tom Riddle. But surely, _surely_ it cannot last for so long? Decades of battle—"

"No, not one war—well, not really. When I was… it was the third. The Third Wizarding War, and it was going to get much worse; we knew that. The two before that lasted a few years each, with long periods of peace between. But it came back—the hate and the darkness—every time. There was a lot of suffering, and there could be so much more. That's what'll happen if I can't fix things. We won't win the third if nothing's changed, and that… it can't happen. It can't."

There was silence for several long moments as he studied her face, analysing, thinking. "I am afraid I simply cannot know that you are trustworthy. Without that assurance, allowing you to alter time itself… Such a risk is one I cannot take."

Lily panicked. Her palms flooded with heat, her arms uncomfortable with it where she'd crossed them, and her ability to focus was slipping. This was an impossible chance, an opportunity to save everything and everyone she held dear; how could she be prevented? She couldn't fail them; she'd sooner die—far sooner—but Dumbledore didn't trust her, and if she didn't have his support she knew it was well within his power to stop her. He'd already seen inside her mind—what further proof could she give? There had to be a way. Her fingernails were digging into the skin of her forearms, bare in the hospital gown she'd been changed into, and there was a slight jolt through her right hand. She looked down, vision starting to swim with the warmth and anxiety, and her eyes fell on the fine line circling her arm from her left palm up almost to her elbow.

Of course. _Of course._

"You _can_ trust me. You can, see?" She held out her arm, the heat in her veins fizzling out as it was chased off by renewed hope.

The headmaster adjusted his glasses on his nose to peer closely at the proffered limb, brow furrowing into a frown before being replaced by a look of open shock. "An Unbreakable Vow? Dear child, you said you are fifteen years old?"

"Almost sixteen," she corrected him automatically. "You know the spell to reveal what vow was made? Go ahead, check it."

Slowly, cautiously, the wizard raised his wand to place it gently on the Vow line, casting the spell wordlessly so a soft orange glow spread along the length of the scar. The light pulsated slightly, then broke off into a small orb which hovered just above her arm.

 _"Do you solemnly swear that, come what may, you will never willingly or with deliberate intent betray the principles of the Order of the Phoenix as set down by Albus Dumbledore?"_

 _"I swear."_

The silence rang out once the eerily disembodied voices dissipated, the latter of which had been her own. Dumbledore studied the air where the orb had been, before turning to her again. "Why?"

Lily understood his question and suddenly felt a little uncomfortable. "My brothers, our best friend and I… we made the Vow so that mistrust would never have to put a strain on our friendship—so we'd always know the others were honest, because… well, otherwise they wouldn't be alive, obviously. It was… things had happened before we were born: a betrayal. Some members of my family died, largely because of a breakdown of trust. We didn't ever want that to happen to us. But this means you _can_ trust me. I'm on your side. I'd literally die before that could change."

Dumbledore watched her again, his expression unfathomable, before answering slowly, "I don't suppose I could ask for a great deal more evidence in your favour than the Vow, in which case I cannot but trust what you say is true. You must tell me what is it that must be changed, and we can put all possible measures in place to ensure—"

"No," Lily cut in, sharp and firm but she hoped not impertinent. She was in a unique position of usefulness here, but that didn't change that she was a teenager and he was one of the greatest wizards of all time. Disrespect was not going to get her anywhere. "No, Headmaster, I understand you want to help, but _I_ have to do this. You did everything you could and you made the right choices for the issues you were facing, but in retrospect, some of those choices turned out to be mistakes, and they'll just be repeated if I hand over the reins. This is _my_ responsibility—I don't know how I ended up here, but I refuse to believe it wasn't for a reason. You have to carry on as you would have done if I'd never shown up, and if there's anything I need to warn you against I will. But _this:_ it's my job. I'm not going to pass it off to anyone else, not even you."

Obviously, she anticipated an argument, but Dumbledore defied her expectations.

After a few more moments of his glinty-eyed consideration, he nodded. "Very well. You have foreknowledge I do not, and if you are certain that is the best path… well, I suppose I must have faith in you. Know, though, that if there is anything you feel might require my assistance, I will aid you in any way you see fit."

Lily let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, sir. I can't say I'm entirely sure how I'm supposed to… you know, _survive_ , for six years—obviously my family aren't… available, but I'm sure I'll—"

"Nonsense, you have a family in your House: Gryffindor, as far as I could tell from your memories. You shall stay here, at least until you are of an age to have finished your education."

Lily's heart skipped a beat at his words, and a small smile crept across her face. She could stay here, be at _home,_ somewhere she knew and understood. She'd have a roof over her head and access to a comprehensive library's worth of research material, not to mention potions supplies, and the chance to improve, learn more, better and prepare herself for what was coming. She could still be a Gryffindor.

"Thank you, sir. That… that would actually be great."


	7. Dramatic Introductions

**Author's Notes:** So I tried to make an aesthetic for this chapter, but I failed. I am sorry. I am also sorry my updating is so sporadic—I have sixth form and I had a birthday and people want me to write personal statements and apply for university which is fucking terrifying let me tell you. My pastoral manager decided it would be a good idea to show me pictures of a girl's only college at Cambridge and tell me how they all correct textbooks and don't drink beer in an attempt to scare me off. Of course, I don't want to go to that college anyway and I know it's absolute bollocks that Oxbridge girls are all straight laced because I know two Oxbridge girls and one of them is a wastrel. Anyway, that has absolutely nothing to do with the chapter so I'm going to be quiet now and let you read. Enjoy :) Oh! And reviews are excellent balms for uni-related anxiety if you want to help a gal out ;) Thanks again to Sable, whose review on the last chapter helped me evade a minor breakdown somewhere between AS Classics and A2 English Lit. You are the absolute greatest my darling x

* * *

Chapter Seven:  
 _Dramatic Introductions of a Very Gryffindor Nature_

 _..._

 _ **Sunday 21**_ _ **st**_ _**September 1975, 5.15 am**_

By quarter past five in the morning following her third consecutive night confined to a hospital bed, Lily had decided she was very much entitled to feel as god-awful as she did. Patience and stillness were infamous as being among her poorest qualities—or it least they had been, when she'd had people who knew her qualities, be they good or bad. She was no one here—a stranger in her own home. Hogwarts _was_ home to her still—especially now that she knew she would be staying—even if it didn't feel like it without the others. Even alone. Even so, the absolute isolation of the hospital wing was getting to her, leaving her with far too much time alone with her thoughts.

She was still making no progress on her memory.

Try as she might to work it forward, her last recollection was being curled up in bed with the boys after her outburst, then . . . nothing. She drew a complete blank.

It had been bearable during that first conversation with Dumbledore, when the shock and confusion and eventual hope of it all had been battling with anxiety for space in her mind. By now, though, she had become somewhat accustomed to the reality of where she was, and it was getting increasingly hard not to focus on her family. Her boys.

If they'd been hurt…

She wasn't sure how she'd react if something had happened to them. It was already driving her half mad just not being _with_ them, let alone not being able to communicate with them in any way. She'd managed four months last time and it had damn near killed her—the feeling of being in pieces, as though three of her limbs were suddenly missing. Now, she was facing six years, _at least._ What if she could never get back to them? Was this her life now? Having lost Teddy, Al and Jay forever didn't bear thinking about; she simply refused to believe it was possible and had thrown herself into trying to figure out what might have happened to trigger her forty-one-year jump.

The small consolation to her current confinement was that she'd had her Scatter Bag (an affectionate term they'd coined for the magically extended bags they all carried in case they ever had to 'Scatter', inspired by Hermione's infamous beaded purse from the Second Wizarding War) on her person. It had escaped mercifully unscathed—unlike her—and was still packed with everything from her four-month period M.I.A., including her school trunk. Every moment Lily had spent in the hospital wing not being drugged, prodded or badgered into some attempt at sleep, she'd been combing through the contents of her bag for anything that might offer the slightest insight as to what might have happened.

The Cruciatus, they'd said. Lily considered it to be the most likely cause of her memory loss so far: she certainly wouldn't be the first person to block any recollection of torture from her mind. The wounds to her leg and shoulder had been superficially healed, but the former still wouldn't take much weight, and the latter was sore to the touch. She was still feeling stupidly slighted by the fact that she'd been burned, having managed to avoid such injury for so many years, but it was hardly her foremost concern.

She was jolted from the thoughts that had been plaguing her since before sun-up by the opening of the doors to the hospital wing and the muffled, worried mumbling that followed. She sat still—knowing no one would notice her in the dark unless she moved—and watched the shadows shuffle across the floor. There were five figures of various heights: one looked to be Madam Pomfrey, the other four were males, with two of the boys supporting a third in getting over to a bed. They passed into a patch of flickering light from one of the sconces, and for a second, Lily's heart stopped dead in her chest.

" _Jay?"_

They didn't hear her—she'd little more than whispered, but it was all she could manage besides scrubbing at her glasses lest there be some odd stain there that might have tricked her. Her brother was there— _right there!—_ but he couldn't be. She didn't understand.

"Pads, grab his leg up there—yeah, there. Pete, go get the potions. He's gonna need a few bottles of each tonight."

His voice was wrong, and so were the names. Through the shock, Lily hadn't even looked to see who the other boys might be, but she forced her eyes to the one he'd called "Pads", and . . . oh. _Oh._

Not her brother.

 _1975._

Lily's first instinct was to leap out of bed and run at them, throw her arms around them, pull them into vice-like hugs just from the _joy_ of knowing she wasn't alone—she had _family_ here, people she loved dearly. They were friends, confidants and guides, and she'd known them her _whole_ life.

Except _that_ was in paint, and the Marauders before her were not. James Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin were flesh and blood—tangible, breathing and alive.

And they didn't know her. The warmth that had flooded Lily's chest was sucked away and replaced with an icy absence; the sudden realisation of what this meant slammed into her like an Immobulus to the face. She wasn't Lily to them, she wasn't _anything._ Just a stranger. There would be no advice or guidance from these boys—who were no older than she herself—not even trust or open ears. They didn't know her. She was still alone.

How had she not thought of this before? It was 1975. Of _course_ they would be at Hogwarts. She'd thought about them so much over the past few days but in her mind, they'd been as they were in the portraits: early twenties, just out of Hogwarts, not fifth-year boys trying to get through their O.W.L.s.

They looked so young, with no idea of the fates awaiting them.

They'd _never_ know. Not if she could help it.

It took Lily a few minutes of just staring, heart racing and hardly daring to breathe, before she came back to reality and remembered where they were, realised _why_ the boys were there. They'd managed to hoist Remus up onto the bed, but he looked like death warmed up. His chest was shredded with deep gashes and scars, a few worryingly lacing his jugular, and a small one that went from just above his left temple down the line of his jaw, ending just at his chin. She didn't recognise that particular cut from his painting or the photographs, so presumably it healed, but the fact did little to comfort her as she sat, horrified, watching Pomfrey fuss and try to work free the mangled fabric, casting spells to mend bone as the boys stood back with pale skin and wide eyes, all three of them faintly shaking. It wasn't as though Lily hadn't seen bloody injuries before, but this was _Remus_ , and as a result of his condition.

 _No-one_ with lycanthropy underwent the transformations without Wolfsbane in her time, not since the Ministry had added the potion to their list of medical remedies which could be picked up free from St. Mungo's or apothecaries on the W.N.H.S. This was not the aftermath she knew of. Clearly, the boys hadn't finished their Animagus training yet—later this year, she recalled from the stories—and that meant Remus was still suffering. Suffering horribly.

Poppy was unscrewing the cap off a bottle, which she went to upend onto his skin. The smell of it was so strong that Lily caught it from her bed. Lemon.

" _What are you doing!?"_

Everyone but Remus jumped at her outburst, turning on her with panicked eyes, either not having realised—or having forgotten—she was there. Where her focus had been so entirely on them moments before, now she could only stare at the bottle of brown liquid in Poppy's hand. Dittany, straight. It hadn't been used in its pure form to treat lycanthropic wounds since the early 2000s.

Lily summoned a small bottle of powdered silver from the medicine cabinet on the far wall and, ignoring the way her body felt unstable and pissedly woozy from the pain potions, she swung her legs off the bed and limped over to Madam Pomfrey, who was slack-jawed and seemingly stunned out of movement.

"What am _I . . .?_ Miss, what are _you_ doing? Get back into bed at once!"

Lily had reached Remus's bedside by then and held out her hand for the dittany.

Poppy did not oblige. "I said back to bed! _Now!_ "

With a frustrated near growl, Lily wandlessly summoned the dittany, biting down the increasing levels of irritation at the medi-witch's shocked gasp. Everyone else in the infirmary appeared to be going into something of a panic mode and made to grab at her, so she gave another impatient flick of her fingers, cursing herself in the back of her mind for leaving her wand under her pillow, and put up a shield between them. The neck of the dittany bottle was narrow, and it wouldn't do for her to be jostled and spill the silver all over the floor. She managed to get all of the powder into the brown fluid, thumbed the bottle opening and shook. Once the mixture glowed briefly rust-red, she carefully poured it over the wounds, which effervesced for a few moments after the liquid hit, and when every visible scar had been covered she used water from the jug on the bedside table to wash off the residual dittany-silver-mix, cast a Drying Charm on the now damp bed as well as Remus, and finally lifted the shield.

No one moved. When she looked up at them, they were all rigid and staring.

"Always powdered silver with the dittany. Lycanthropic bites and scratches, even to himself, react badly with the tissue, and only minor wounds will heal completely with dittany alone—it closes the wound quickly, but messily. Add the silver and they'll come up much better. The worst of them will still scar some, obviously, but a lot of these shouldn't mark at all now."

No one replied, and with a sensation somewhat like drowning Lily sank back into the world which had seemingly vanished in the rush of trying to help.

Oh _shit._ What had she just said? What had she just _done?_

"Who said anything about lycanthropy?" James asked slowly, eyes narrowed. Lily could see his hand go to the back pocket of his trousers and tighten around his wand.

 _Shit, shit, shit._

"Sorry. Sorry, not my place to . . . yeah. Sorry, I'll . . ." She trailed off, awkwardly adjusting her glasses before reaching into the pocket of the dressing gown she'd been forced to wear. She pulled out a bar of her best Honeyduke's dark—one she'd been delighted to find in her trunk—and set it down on the sheets beside the unconscious Remus. "Make sure he eats that, even if he doesn't feel like it. It'll help."

With that, she turned back to her bed, hoping to Merlin, Morgana, and Agrippa that she managed to get there before she actually collapsed. The way they'd looked at her . . . like she was some kind of threat. Like she might hurt Remus, hurt _any_ of them.

They didn't know her.

If the concept had hurt minutes earlier, it was incomparable to how she felt now. They'd been so close. The fact that they had, in fact, been oil paintings was completely ignored as various children trudged dirt in and out of her dad's study to ask advice, vent, or just sit and chat with the Marauders and Evans, as well as Tonks and Fred, whose portraits had hung beside those of the infamous quartet.

When Lily was at home, it was in front of the enormous painting of a living room above the fireplace in her dad's study that she most often found herself after Nightmares. A parade of sleepy characters would stumble in from their own frames—the first James and Lily, Sirius and Remus, Tonks and Fred, when he wasn't visiting his twin. She'd curl up in the cosy orange armchair, light the sconces and the fire, and talk. She'd tell them about her Nightmares—they remembered many of them happening for real—and they'd tell her stories: happier ones of their days at Hogwarts, their lives together.

Lily had had more potions tips from her namesake than from her schoolmaster, almost as many as she'd had from Draco. On several occasions, she'd floated the whole painting in front of the window so they could see the Quidditch practices in the back garden: Lily's mother and grandfather made a formidable coaching team. The Marauders had advised her on duelling, discussed pranks, and been a constant source of comfort, come what may.

Every summer and Christmas, she would barrel into the room they hung in with Jay, Al and Teddy to tell them tales of all their misdemeanours at school, moving from mugs of hot chocolate to shots of firewhiskey to accompany the conversations as they got older. Luna even used to paint canvases of food and drink for them on special occasions, resulting often in the portraits getting more sloshed than the Fat Lady on her birthday. They had meant so much to her—confidants for the things she wouldn't tell even her boys, and now she was nothing to them. Her hands were shaking, and she knew if it wasn't for the potions drugging her system, her palms would be burning. Possibly several items of furniture too.

Lily was just a pace away from her own bed, but her head was swimming and her leg was threatening to give out. She wasn't sure she'd be able to climb back up, even though it was only set at a little lower than hip-height. Frustration bubbled up fast and, in combination with her odd backwards mourning for the Marauders, she felt as though everything was falling apart.

"Oi, Brandy."

She stilled at the voice—James's voice—using what had always been the favourite of his portrait's numerous nicknames for her. Sirius and Remus had teased him about it—Brandy for Brandy Snaps, the muggle ginger biscuits in honour of her hair.

 _Don't you cry. Don't you dare cry._

She turned slowly, and there they were: three of the four Marauders, suspicion in their eyes and defensiveness in their stances.

"Okay, I don't know who the hell you are, but that," James paused, gesturing behind him to Remus's unconscious form, "is our friend. So whatever illusions you're under as to what's going on here, you need to keep them to yourself, alright? Not a word, not a _breath,_ to anyone, or we'll have a serious problem on our hands."

Keeping her expression under control was quite possibly the hardest thing Lily had ever had to do, but a lifetime of issues with authority seemed to pay off as she hiked one eyebrow.

"I've absolutely no clue what you're on about."

James paused, looking sceptical, then nodded sharply. "Great. Let's keep it that way, shall we?"

Lily gave no response: around the thunder of blood past her ears, and the distinctive sound of her soul tearing itself to shreds, she had no response to give.

"What's your name, anyway?" Sirius asked, looking even more ready than James to pounce at the slightest provocation.

With a slight upward jerk of her chin, Lily held his eyes. "Brandy does me just fine, thanks."

And with that, she flicked her wrist and the curtains around her bed yanked shut. There were a few beats of silence before the telltale shuffle of feet across the floor, back to Remus's bedside and a safe distance from the new unknown quantity, the risk that she clearly was in their eyes.

Ignoring the throbbing pain in her leg, Lily pulled herself up onto her bed and sat, breath rattling in and out of her lungs, taking a little bit more of her heart with it every time.


	8. Dreams, Plans, and Other Bad Things

**Author's Notes:** Hi gang! So we're getting into unbeta-d territory now—I know, it's frightening—so forgive me if there are bits and bobs that aren't quite right. This chapter has an aesthetic, which can be found at hogwartsaheadcanon on tumblr tagged #the phoenix in the cuckoo clock, should you wish to check it out. Updates are likely going to become slightly less erratic, but slightly less regular. I'll _try_ to keep posting each weekend at least, but dear old education might get in the way a wee bit, as might my blundering attempts to write a personal statement and fill in my UCAS form. As always and ever, reviews are the greatest of motivators, and I hope you enjoy the chapter (which is a little trippy, but I hope it works!)...

* * *

Chapter 8:  
 _Dreams, Plans, and Other Bad Things_

 _..._

 _ **Monday 22**_ _ **nd**_ _**September 1975**_

Lily hated her room. After the monotony, the toxic mix of isolation and an utter absence of privacy provided by the hospital wing, perhaps she should have been glad—grateful, even.

She wasn't.

Dumbledore had, owing to the nature of her 'mission' in the past, given her a private room right at the top of the Gryffindor girl's tower. It was round, simply but pleasantly furnished with a four poster bed, wardrobe, desk, chair and a small bookshelf. She had a bathroom to herself, and the crimson bedding looked too comfortable for belief.

Lily took one look at it, slammed the door, flicked up a few wandless silencing charms, and screamed.

She threw her scatter-bag (now containing every one of her worldly possessions) violently against a wall. She kicked over the chair, then the desk, and screamed until the heat went out of her veins and she collapsed in a defeated heap on the floor, the room around her filling slowly but steadily with smoke. She pulled out her wand and sent an angry jet of water at the bed to douse the burning sheets and curtains, soaking herself in the process, hurled her wand at the bookshelf where it crashed to the floor with a small trail of sparks, and stopped.

For several long moments, the room was utterly silent, and then, finally, she began to sob.

It was too much, too cruel for the universe to have dropped her here, decades from home and her loved ones; to have offered her a glimpse of hope in the shape of the Marauders, only to rip it away.

And for trying to help— _that_ was the worst part. It was like some sick test: had she been expected to just _sit_ there and do _nothing_ when she knew she could ease Remus's troubles, even if only a little? Was this some form of divine punishment for being overly impulsive? If so, whatever force had it out for her was surely going too far by forcing her to share _classes_ with them. Dumbledore had insisted she'd be better off repeating fifth year: it was the right one for her age, after all, and with the stress of acclimatising to a new century, going over topics she already knew would surely ease the amount of pressure on her shoulders.

Lily had agreed. Of course, the fact that in doing so she was consenting to be the Marauders' classmate had escaped her at the time. Now she was going to be stuck with them, with their suspicious glances and silent demands for explanations she couldn't give them even if she wanted to: for pity's sake, she had no clue what was going on herself.

How was she here? Why? She knew her own goals, certainly, but was it _because_ of Hermione's calculations and horrifying conclusion that Lily found herself decades in the past, or was that simply the one positive coincidence she was going to be offered in this whole mess?

How much time had she missed? If she'd been _sent_ here… the amount of time it would take to develop such technology was vast—years, _decades_ even—and surely she'd not forgotten _that_ much? Not to mention she'd have aged, and there was nothing to account for the apparent sameness of her body if so much time had passed.

So _how_?

There were no answers; no answers and seemingly infinite questions, swirling around her mind like that inferno of autumn leaves Jay had conjured in one of her last remaining memories of the time she'd left behind.

The thought of Jay came like a punch to Lily's gut, and she moaned as she sank further into the floor.

No Mum and Dad, no cousins, aunts, uncles, godparents… No family at all.

Al had always said that people, really, weren't that different from plants in that if they grew in close proximity, they would mould and curl to each other's space.

So it had been with Lily. She'd grown up packed in like a sardine in a tin with friends and family, and now their absence was too apparent, too absolute to bear. The space at her sides was supposed to be filled by her boys, and without them, she felt off-balance, unstable, like she might topple over any moment without them there to hold her up. Lily was just one limb of a whole person, a sector of a unit that was useless without her other pieces.

 _Useless._ Except she couldn't _be_ useless here, she didn't have the time. Whether or not the other occupants of the castle realised it yet, war was careering towards them all at a frightening pace and would be upon them before three years were up. Of course, there was only so much interfering she felt she really ought to do, but how much precisely was a big grey area—certainly big enough for her to do _something._

And the Marauders… somehow Lily _had_ to gain their trust. Her attempt to help in the hospital wing had done little more than establish her as a stranger who knew their most closely guarded secret, but she couldn't undo that now. She had to push forward, to prove to them beyond any doubt that she meant them no ill-will, that her concern for Remus was just that, and not some underhand power-play or threat.

But they weren't going to believe her easily—especially not as her situation necessitated lying to them about everything else.

With the barrage of answerless questions beating around the inside of her skull, Lily gave up the fight against exhaustion and curled up where she was, a tear rolling from her cheek and vanishing down a gap between the floorboards as she let sleep claim her.

…

For the first time since her arrival in 1975, that night the Nightmares came to Lily in full force: her grandparents, Sirius, Remus—even Pettigrew. Dumbledore, her dad's capture and mum's injury, Fred, Tonks, Dobby. Lily woke up shaking, forehead sweat-damp and her lungs burning, grasping out desperately for the hands that were _always_ there. Mum, Dad, Al, Jay, Teddy—someone was _always_ there for her.

Except no-one was, and the disorientation of waiting on the cold floor with a stinging face and her heart going at the rate of knots for comfort that _wasn't coming, why aren't they coming?_ was overwhelming. It took her almost a quarter of an hour to remember where she was—that she was alone, now—and another half hour after the sudden jolt of that realisation to calm herself down enough to get up off the floor without fear of simply falling back down, or else setting everything flammable in the room ablaze.

Just the thought of the latter had set Lily's stomach rolling in a way it never had before. Of course, the outbursts themselves had upset and frustrated her many times—enormously so—but this was different. Her own body felt like a traitor, and the thought of what it could do—with or without her consent—truly frightened her for the first time in her memory. Part of her wondered why, yearned for the answer to yet another question; but another, stronger part of her recoiled. _Leave it alone,_ it said, _you've got enough on your plate. Don't dwell on it. Leave it alone._

As she tried to get herself back on a firm footing with reality, Lily scrabbled around the floor in search of her glasses, which had escaped during the night. She found them eventually, feeling marginally better for a moment as her fingers settled on one arm, though the satisfaction was short-lived: she yelped as a sharp pain shot through her thumb, and as she sucked at the small cut which had formed there, she realised the lenses must have shattered during all her nightmare-induced thrashing. That, at least, explained why the left side of her face stung and ached.

With a weary sigh, she muttered an _Occulus Repairo_ , carefully if blindly retrieving her specs from the minefield of shattered glass they sat in and blinking as the world came back into focus. Pulling herself shakily to her feet, she dragged herself to the bathroom with all the enthusiasm of one about to face a firing squad. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed what she'd already known: she looked like shite. Her face was cut in several places, small pieces of glass still sticking to and embedded in her skin. Combined with dark, bruise-like circles under her eyes and 'dragged through a hedge backwards' hair, she really was quite a sight to behold. Biting down hard on her lip against the pain, she muttered several charms at her own reflection and watched as the air began to shimmer with the tiny shards and dust-like particles of glass as they pulled themselves from her skin and hair, some glinting with blood as they caught the light. With a flick of her fingers, the eerie silver-red cloud condensed into a narrow stream and ran like water straight down the sink.

 _First job, fix your face. Second job… Lord knows._

As Lily removed her trunk from her scatter-bag and rooted through it in search of bottle of Dittany, she weighed up her options for the rest of the day. She _should_ be attending lessons with her new fellow students, but concept left her nauseous. She wasn't sure she was ready to deal with it—any of it—and what had initially been an exciting opportunity to continue her education had quickly soured into something pointless, a source of anxiety and nothing more. What was there for her to gain in re-sitting her OWLs, or evening staying on for NEWTs? Yes, she had a _lot_ left to learn in many areas, but this was school, not boot-camp: she wasn't going to be taught how to bring down an entire army of dark wizards in DADA, or how to gain the trust of loved ones who had no idea who she was in Charms.

Perhaps she shouldn't be staying at Hogwarts at all. Maybe she could floo to London and seek out the famous Alastor Moody at the Ministry, persuade him to let her into the Auror program. She was far too young, of course, and wouldn't have any qualifications, but if anyone could be persuaded to play outside of the rules for the greater good, surely it was Mad-Eye…

Except then what would she do about the Marauders? How was she to keep an eye on Pettigrew from London? No. No, she had to stay and make the best of the situation. After all, what would her father say if he knew she'd passed up the opportunity to spend time with the parents he'd never known? What about Teddy? Either one of them would have given _anything_ to be in her shoes, and she had a duty to do the best she could in their stead.

Back in the bathroom, Lily hissed as she tipped the Dittany over her face, the cuts left by the glass sizzling angrily as her skin knitted back together.

" _No pain, no gain, Lils. You don't win the game if you let a few cuts and bruises get you down."_

The stab of emotion as Lily heard her mother's voice in her mind, clear as a bell, was far worse than the sting of glass. She hadn't seen her mother in months—not since before she'd gone MIA in her search for a way into Azkaban, or rather a way _out_ for her dad. The _Sectumsempra_ Ginny had taken had been nasty, and it had been touch and go for a week or so as the Blood Replenishing Draughts did their work and she remained unconscious. When she'd come round, she'd been bedridden, entirely unable to walk, and enormously confused. She hadn't remembered what had happened, kept asking after Harry and, even more painfully, Fred. Most days she looked at her own children with no recognition in her eyes, and it had been unbearable.

So Lily had decided not to bear it, and she had left.

 _If I can change this time—alter what happens here—I can stop it. Mum will be okay. If I can do this, they'll all be fine._

But how? That was the question.

She had no answers, so she hissed a charm to gutter the bathroom's sconces and, with the sky outside still the deep blue-black of the small hours, she climbed beneath her scorched bedcovers and quickly lost herself in a shallow, restless sleep.

…

 _She had to keep looking. What exactly she was looking_ for _evaded her, but she'd know it when she found it: of that Lily was sure. Dark, cloaked shapes flitted just out of her vision, clinging to the walls of her dorm too far away for her to see, and she could feel the cold creeping inwards, but she had to keep looking. She had to._

 _Her trunk, though, went down for miles. She was searching for something at the very bottom, but she'd been digging for hours, days, months even. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been here, in the dark, just searching and hoping._

 _She pulled object after object out of the endless case, tossing each over her shoulder, though there was never any noise from them hitting the ground. Out came a pocket watch the size of a saucer, only one hand whizzing around and around the face which, instead of numbers, bore twelve scrawls of 'Too late!'. Out came a pair of bright red shoes which screamed 'There's no place like home!' as they tried to bite off Lily's fingers; a procession of tiny rodents which scuttled in their hundreds up her arms and over her shoulders; a fistful of bright scarlet and gold feathers which glowed red hot the moment she took hold of them; and an elegantly carved horn depicting a cloaked man and a bird on a bridge by a sprawling tree. On and on she dug, even as a small and distant voice in her mind told her that none of this made sense, that she was sleeping and it wasn't real—not one of the Nightmares she was so well acquainted with, but simply a fabrication of her own subconscious. Lily heard all this, and she understood._

 _She kept digging._

 _After what might have been days or minutes more, Lily's hands found no more clocks, or rats, or feathers; instead, they plunged into cool, damp earth—not exactly pleasant, but a crystal blue relief spread like iced water from her fingers and blanketed her, swallowed her whole. Finally._

 _There it was, lying in the dirt at the bottom of the shallow trunk, half buried but still easily identifiable:_ An Expert Apothecarist's Guide to Advanced Magical Remedies, 4th Edition. _From the front cover, an ill-looking and pustule-covered witch beamed as a nurse spoon-fed her a smoking, faintly luminous green potion, causing her legions of boils and pox to vanish without a trace. The enchanted image cycled round and round, and Lily reached into the trunk to retrieve it from the clutches of the earth._

 _But it didn't want to come. She tugged, then tugged harder, but the ground was holding on. With a frustrated snarl, Lily wiped the sweat and dirt off her brow, shoved her glasses higher up her nose, and dug her fingers beneath the book, feeling the dirt pack itself in under her nails and burrow into the creases of her knuckles._

 _It wrenched free, but the moment it did, Lily realised her error. The book had been plugging a hole, wedging open a gap, and now she'd removed it the ground beneath (or was it inside?) the trunk began to crumble and collapse. She tried to pull away, but the chasm of the trunk pulled back, and she was falling, falling, falling…_

 _She landed with a thud under a midnight sky, a spill of ink interrupted by the black scars and gashes of leafless winter trees. There was a low wind, and once again Lily heard voices caught up in the otherwise meaningless noise. It was Teddy, and he was calling for her._

 _She ran, setting off at full tilt through what she became aware was the Forbidden Forest. She could feel her wand in her pocket, except the pocket had been stitched shut, and she couldn't get to it. The forest floor flew by beneath her, all ripe earth, twigs and rotten leaves, but it was gravel that Lily felt biting into the soles of her bare feet._

Careful now, _warned Lily's own voice again from the far reaches of her awareness._ Don't keep digging, too close, too close…

 _Up ahead the trees were thinning, and Lily sprinted towards them, calling back to the darkness._

" _Teddy? Teddy, where are you? Ted—"_

 _She burst through into a clearing and there he was, blue-haired and bright-eyed, smiling up at her from his seat on the floor. He wasn't alone._

 _A stag stood perfectly still in the shadows of the surrounding trees, and the even darker shadow of a rat peered out from between its antlers. Within the circle of the clearing an enormous black dog was crouched, belly to the ground and ears flattened back, whining out its distress._

 _And there, in the dead centre, Teddy sat raking his fingers through the shaggy grey pelt of an amber-eyed wolf._

 _The bright white light of the full moon filtered down through the branches overhead and Lily's heart stopped dead in her chest._

" _Teddy, no! It's too soon, it isn't safe! He's not safe, Ted, he's not in control!"_

 _Teddy just smiled, an easy spill of light like the sunrise caught on a frosty November pavement. "No, Tiny, it's okay: you did it. You found it, so he's safe now. He's okay, see?"_

" _What? I didn't… found_ what, _Ted? I don't know what you're saying to me. I don't understand."_

 _His smile softened, and another gust of wind blew through the trees. She smelled lemon. Or no, not lemon…_

" _Your 'in', Lils. You've found your way in."_

 _Something nudged at Lily's leg, and when she looked down the black dog was staring back up at her, a purple flower held ever-so-delicately between his teeth._

She woke up.

Her breaths came hard and ragged, and her hands were shaking.

" _You've found your way in,"_ Teddy had said, as though it would be easy.

It wouldn't. It would be time-consuming, dangerous, _exceedingly_ costly and at least twelve different kinds of illegal. It would be nigh-on impossible to explain to the Marauders without using the term 'time travel'. It was, in short, a terrible plan.

As the lazy rays of a September sunrise began to claw their way over the mountains and in through her window, Lily smiled.

She had a potion to brew.


	9. A Quill, a Bird, and a Ticking Clock

**Author's Notes:** I know. I know, I know—I've not updated in YONKS and I'm so very very sorry, but I feel like I'm back on a roll now so updates should be more regular again. Also, I hope you don't mind the first part of this chapter—it's less a forwarding of the plot and more providing you with (totally indulgent) backstory, because I'm a geek and think about these things. Plus, what with this being a time-travel story spanning multiple eras, it might be a while before your non-Marauder faves make a personal appearance, so I figured I'd give you bits like this occasionally to provide you with a fix, as well as illuminate a little more of the world Lily grew up in and what, in this universe, the main gen folk have been getting up to since The Battle of Hogwarts. At any rate, I really hope you enjoy it. Oh oh! Also! I recently learned you can _reply to comments through PM on here?!_ I had no clue, so I'll try to do that from now on :) There will hopefully be an aesthetic for this on my tumblr ( hogwartsaheadcanon) at some point, but tonight I need to do Classics homework and sleep so my form tutor doesn't get worried when I fall asleep in lessons again... whoops. Anywho, with all that out of the way, on with the show!

* * *

Chapter 9:  
 _A Quill, a Bird, and a Ticking Clock_

 _..._

 _ **Tuesday 23rd September**_

 _ **Belby's and Malfoy's Wolfsbane**_

 _The Wolfsbane potion, invented by Damocles Belby in 1979, was the first significant innovation in the treatment of Lycanthropy and its effects. Allowing the werewolf to retain his own mind during the Full Moon transformation, it rendered the usually mindless and vicious beast docile and no more dangerous than the untransformed human, albeit in canine form. As such, the publication of Belby's creation provided Werewolves the world over with a glimmer of hope—the potential for not only an easing of their suffering but perhaps for the eventual de-stigmatisation of their kind._

 _Unfortunately, it was not to be. The immense cost and complexity of the potion excluded most Lycanthropes, so often denied work, from purchasing ingredients; and even those with the finances to do so rarely possessed the level of skill to be able to recreate the potion successfully: though records were (perhaps deliberately) ill kept, it is suspected that no less than sixty wix in Britain lost their lives to Aconite poisoning having consumed incorrectly brewed Wolfsbane._

 _As such, access to safe potion remained a pipe-dream for most all Lycanthropes for almost thirty years, until a collaboration between the Ministry of Magic and renowned Apothecarist and Potioneer Draco Malfoy fanned the ember of hope into a flame brighter than any Werewolf had dared to hope._

 _In 2008, the then head of the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures (now called the Department for the Support of Magical Beings) Hermione Granger allocated significant monies from the B.A.R.F. (Beings' Access, Recognition and Financing) Fund to a research team, lead by Malfoy, in the hopes of developing a method of batch-processing Wolfsbane in order to make it affordable to all those in need._

 _The original aim fell flat: brewing Wolfsbane in such large volumes was quite simply impossible. What they achieved, however, was even greater. A new recipe for Wolfsbane was created, perhaps counter-intuitively even more complex and costly than the last. It was, however, a significant advance—far more potent in small quantities, non-perishable, effective in one dose the night of the Full Moon, and able to completely eliminate the effects of ill-health and fatigue both prior to and after the transformation._

 _Determined to make the new wonder potion widely available, Granger turned her thoughts to a blanket overhaul of the health-care system of Wizarding Britain. Inspired by her heritage and early upbringing, Granger urged the Ministry of Magic to take a leaf out of the book of the UK's Muggle government and establish a 'National Health Service', providing free treatment to all those in need. The system, funded with war reparations and greater taxes on the super-rich of Wizarding Britain—an initiative fronted and encouraged by Draco Malfoy himself—provided vast new job opportunities in Magical Health Care. Priority access to said jobs was given to those who had historically been denied the very care they were now trained to give._

 _The widespread investment in teaching new Healers and Potioneers revolutionised magical medicine in the UK and put it at the international forefront of medical innovation. Production costs, however, left the system financially unstable until, in 2011, a deal was proposed: under the 'Components for Capacity Trade Treaty', vital potions ingredients harvested in countries the world over—to which access had been highly restricted both financially and legally for centuries—would be provided to the W.N.H.S. at dramatically reduced costs under special licensing schemes, in exchange for the subsidised training of medical and potions specialists, who would then be able to provide their new found expertise back in their home countries._

 _Licenses were established, and soon both ingredients and international trainees were flooding into the St Mungo's hub and the W.N.H.S.'s affiliated Potioneers, contracted into brewing medical potions for the Ministry while running their own private businesses and Apothecaries. In 2012, just four years after Granger and Malfoy had set about providing Belby's Wolfsbane at low-cost, wix across the nation were receiving essential potions and treatments for nothing, and Lycanthropes were able to pick up a month's supply of Malfoy's Wolfsbane at their local apothecary, for free._

 _In this book, we provide both recipes for Wolfsbane—Belby's (overleaf) primarily for training and reference purposes, and Malfoy's for production and provision to Lycanthropes by W.N.H.S employees and contracted distributors. Note that, like this book, the recipe for Malfoy's Wolfsbane_ _ **must not be made available publicly.**_ _Several of the ingredients herein are Class A Civilian Untradeables which may not under any circumstances be purchased or possessed by those without an Expert Affiliate Brewer's License, nor from any channels other than those explicitly sanctioned by the Ministry. If brewed incorrectly, or with sub-standard ingredients, Malfoy's Wolfsbane is_ _ **highly**_ _liable to kill the one foolish enough to attempt its creation. The slightest misstep could prompt the potion to explode with immense violence, produce toxic fumes, catch fire, or eat its way through not only the cauldron but up to three floors of a house and several feet of the ground beneath._

 _ **Do not**_ _attempt to brew this potion on private property that has not been Ministry-approved._

 _ **Do not**_ _keep any ingredients where they might easily be found or taken._

 _ **Do not**_ _permit unlicensed individuals or non-trainees within the vicinity of the brewing process._

 _ **Do not**_ _leave the potion unattended for the portions of the recipe underlined in red._

 _ **Do not**_ _provide either the method or the ingredients list to anyone without the appropriate training and licensing._

 _ **Do**_ _wear full safety gear and employ protective warding at_ _ **all times**_ _whilst brewing this potion._

…

By midday, Lily knew she could do it.

Her room—which only hours before had been utterly barren of even the slightest personal touch—had been righted briefly before being thrown into turmoil again. The desk was stacked high with cauldrons, phials, knives, sieves and other potioneering tools; and the bed had fared little better, with jars, boxes, bottles and tins of ingredients spanning every spare inch from the footboard to the pillow. Books were stacked in chaotic piles on the floor, rolls of parchment tumbled from the chair, and even then her trunk was half full of gadgets, notes, photographs, blankets—in short, more than enough bits and bobs to furnish one pokey, low-ceilinged room at the top of a tower.

The manic unpacking had not been prompted by a desire to decorate, though: with the exception of a few herbs and flowers she needed to pick fresh, Lily had confirmed that she had everything she needed to begin brewing Malfoy's Wolfsbane.

Her plan was in motion, but if she wanted to pull this off she needed _time,_ and that was something only Dumbledore could give her. Hoping to avoid attention, she'd cast a Notice-Me-Not charm before leaving her room: she'd considered Disillusionment, but someone could easily spot the tell-tale rippling of the air and decide to investigate. People would _see_ her with a Notice-Me-Not: it just wouldn't occur to them to care.

She made her way across the castle through less travelled corridors and secret passages where possible, taking her longer than a direct route would have done, but eventually she emerged from behind a suit of armour just around the corner from the Headmaster's study. Seeing the grand statue of a Griffin which marked the entrance sent a shockwave of longing through her: she'd been summoned here so many times to answer for general misadventures, but never once had she made the trip alone.

Once again pushing aside the sense of absence before it swallowed her, Lily muttered the password, "Acid pops," and forced out a stabilising breath. The stone stairway revealed itself as the Griffin rotated, and the heavy oak door at the top was much the same as she had ever known it.

She only had to knock twice before the door swung in, an enquiring "Yes?" beckoning her to enter.

"Professor Dumbledore," Lily greeted with a nod as she approached the wide desk he worked at.

Dumbledore smiled and gestured to the chair beside Lily, but as she went to sit a great cawing and flapping came from behind her and—jumping halfway out of her skin—she span around just in time to see a great burst of flame headed straight for her.

…

 _She couldn't open her eyes._

 _It was agony._

 _Her lungs were burning, and so was the air around her. The world was on fire._

 _It was her fault, all her fault. She'd wanted to save them, to help, and now they were gone and she'd failed them all. She just needed another chance— a chance to make things right. Just one more chance and she'd fix everything, she'd do anything._

 _Her skin was blistering, she felt as though she was melting._

 _Quicker and easier than falling asleep, quicker and easier than falling asleep, quicker and easier than falling asleep. They didn't suffer. Please say they didn't suffer._

 _Look after them, promise me you'll look after them, that they'll be ok._

 _I'll do anything, please, this is my fault. I'll do anything, I'll make it right—just give me a chance._

 _I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry._

…

Lily came to on the floor of Dumbledore's study, propped up against the desk and gasping for air. The Nightmare was pulling back as quickly as it had arrived, the thoughts and feelings already as intangible to her as smoke through her fingers, but the inside of her eyelids still glowed orange with the memory of fire.

"There now, there now, you're quite safe. Take a deep breath in—there, just so. Can you hear me, Lily? Do you know where you are?"

Dumbledore's voice came cool and tranquil as a woodland stream, chasing away the last flickers of flame and calming the tremors that wracked Lily's hands. She nodded, then opened her eyes.

The world settled back into focus as the headmaster replaced her glasses, which had once again fallen off, and offered an encouraging smile through his own half-moon spectacles from where he knelt on the floor beside her. "There we go, very well done. You simply lost consciousness for a few moments, nothing to be ashamed of—I do believe Fawkes gave you something of a fright."

Lily blinked, her brow furrowing. "I wha—Fawkes? I don't—"

The end of her sentence was cut off by a repentant squawk, and she looked up at the chair she'd been stood by, straight into the face of the cause of her collapse—not, as she had thought, an eruption of fire, but a bird.

"Oh," she breathed, all fear forgotten in a second. Perched with his claws digging into the seat's leather upholstery was Dumbledore's phoenix familiar, and Lily knew without question that she had never seen so beautiful a creature, nor ever would again.

" _Oh,"_ she repeated, "you're _magnificent."_

And he was, his gold and scarlet plumage glowing like a beacon lit from within, huge black eyes full of age and knowing, head tilted as he watched her.

Dumbledore hummed in obvious approval at her statement. "Indeed, though he is rarely so enthusiastic in his greeting of strangers. I rather suspect he's taken a liking to you."

" _Really?"_ Lily asked, feeling much as she had the first time her parents had let her ride a full-sized broom.

"Most certainly, though I can send him to my private quarters if his presence is distressing to you."

"No! No no, that wasn't his fault," she insisted as she pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the tremble in her legs. "That wasn't _your_ fault, Fawkes: I'm just a little jumpy at the moment, I suppose. _Merlin_ you're beautiful—may I?" She directed the question to Dumbledore, her hand half raised towards feathers.

"By all means," he replied.

Lily raised her hand a little further, but Fawkes beat her to it, pushing his head into her palm with a pleased caw and all the affection of a well-trained kneazle. "Wow, hello. Hello, you—it's an honour to meet you. I'm Lily—your wizard is letting me stay here, at Hogwarts. I hope you don't mind."

There was another brief rustle of activity as Fawkes beat his wings once, hard, taking to the air for a moment before alighting on her outstretched arm.

"Mind?" the headmaster chuckled. "I doubt he shall ever want to leave your side if this is any indication. Have you befriended a member of his kind before, perhaps?"

"What, me? Not on your life: I can't even persuade cats to sit on my lap without clawing me, let alone buddy up with a _phoenix_ ," Lily said, utterly in awe, as she carefully lowered herself into the seat she had intended to take before passing out.

"Most peculiar," Dumbledore said with a glint of what might just have been respect in his eye as he, having settled back into his own seat opposite Lily, peered at her over bridged fingers. "Well, now that you two are acquainted, I believe you had something you wished to discuss?"

"Right, of course. Well, I assume you already know I wasn't in classes this morning."

"I had a vague inkling as such, yes," Dumbledore confirmed.

"Yeah. I just… I don't know, I think maybe…"

"You would like a little time to adjust to your new environment before plunging headfirst into life and lessons?"

Lily paused, uncomfortable with admitting she needed a break despite it having been her intention in visiting Dumbledore in the first place. She drew a breath, then nodded.

"It's quite alright—I should have insisted on it myself. You are adapting to a new life on a multitude of levels, and you need both the mental and temporal space in which to do so. I suspect you'll also want to put together a story of some sort—the staff know we are welcoming a new student, previously home-educated, but nothing more. Professor McGonagall—your Head of House—has been informed of the true nature of your presence, so you may safely address any needs or concerns to her as well as myself: I have no doubt she'll want to meet with you at some point in the near future for a chat. As for your acclimatisation, it occurred to me this morning that investing in some new attire, as well as in-date publications of certain books and gadgetry might not go amiss, so perhaps a trip or two to Diagon Alley might help you find your bearings, so to speak?"

Fawkes gave an agreeable sort of squawk, and Lily breathed out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Professor—I think that would really help."

"I am glad to hear so. Now, since you've already made the trip down from Gryffindor tower, I think perhaps we should perhaps discuss your name."

Lily blinked, using the hand not being pinned down by Fawkes to readjust her glasses. "My name?"

"Quite. Do you intend to continue using it, or would you prefer to take up an alias? I presume the latter since I myself am still unaware of your surname."

Recalling the night in the hospital wing, her refusal to hand over her identity to the Marauders, Lily sighed. Of course she'd have to change her name.

"I think the alias would probably be best. Is there any way to ensure I wouldn't be found out by… a tracking spell, for example—a Homonculous Charm, say?" she asked, an image of the Marauders' Map flashing through her mind.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Do you consider it likely that a Homonculous charm will be used against you?"

"Well, probably not, but… better safe than sorry, right? I'd prefer not to be caught in any lies if possible: it would only lead to uncomfortable questions," Lily quickly assured the Headmaster. He hummed in agreement, though she didn't miss the sceptical glint in his eye.

"Indeed. In order to be certain that no charm would reveal your identity, you would have to actively change your name: not a difficult task, but official, in the law of both Ministry and magic itself."

Swallowing an unexpected swell of nausea, she nodded. "Okay. Can we do it now?"

"You are quite certain?"

"Yes."

With a nod, Dumbledore summoned a clean sheet of parchment, which he placed flat on the desk before him. On top of this he sat an inkwell, and, withdrawing his wand, began to mutter complex charms over the two items. This continued for a minute or so, until both parchment and inkwell glowed faintly as if charged, and Dumbledore slid them across the desk towards Lily.

"It's a simple case of dipping your wand into the ink and with it, writing out your new name. The magic will bind, and the spell will be complete."

Lily drew her wand from her sleeve and removed the stopper from the ink, then paused.

She could be here, in this life, for years. Who did she want to be? What name would this new incarnation of herself bear?

Again, her mind drifted back to the hospital wing.

" _Brandy does me just fine, thanks."_

With the slightest upward twitch of her lips, she dipped her wand, and began to write.

As soon as she was done, the letters began to glow gold. For a brief moment they appeared, bright and in her own messy script, on the back of her right hand; but they were gone a second later, as though they'd sunk into her skin. She passed the parchment back to Dumbledore, who tilted his head in an expression of polite enquiry as he read.

"Brandy Smith?" he asked.

"It's… I guess it's kind of an inside joke. I think I'll probably go by Bran."


	10. Several Plans of Dubious Quality

**Author's Notes:** This has been the most delicious bitch of a chapter to write (and re-write, and re-write again). It was originally, would you believe, even longer than this, but I've chopped it into a smaller chunk to savour the pleasure ;) I really really hope you like it—action's ramping up, things are starting to happen, and I actively enjoyed writing every draft, even if I hated them the next day (which is why I am publishing this at half one in the morning when I have to get up at around seven and am going to a midnight showing at the cinema tonight, so there'll be no sleep then. If I don't put it up before I go to bed, I'll rewrite again tomorrow, I just know it). I struggled a little with the pacing so let me know what you think—always let me know what you think, reviews are the life blood I need to survive ;) Finally, before I stop rambling, I want to thank which ever one of you glorious readers nominated this fic for the Marauder Medals for doing so: it means the absolute world, and you're amazing. Anyway, I shall let you get on with the show...

* * *

Chapter Ten:  
 _Several Plans of Dubious Quality_

 _..._

 _ **Tuesday 21st October 1975**_

At twenty-six minutes past eight in the morning the full moon retired behind the horizon and, enclosed by the barred windows and locked doors of the Shrieking Shack, the skin of a wolf began to tear itself away from the boy within. It took at least two minutes for the transformation to be fully complete: two short minutes barely registered by the rest of the world, but an awfully long time for one whose bones are breaking and reconfiguring, paws back into hands and feet, fur giving way to skin and—on any other morning—the mind of a human breaking through the mind of a beast.

Not so that day. The final slither of moonlight vanished beyond the edge of the world, and Remus's skin settled back around him, whole to an unprecedented degree. There had been no throwing himself against walls or tearing himself open the night before, and Remus wondered over the use of 'himself', for once almost wholly accurate. He'd been _him._ His body had warped and twisted, given over to the wolf, but _he_ , in his mind, had stayed.

Staring down at unbloodied knuckles, splinterless hands, Remus shakily pushed himself to his feet. He felt a little unstable, his bones ached, and his head was pounding, but other than that he felt… almost normal.

 _I shouldn't be able to stand,_ he thought. _I shouldn't be able to_ move.

For a decade the morning after every full moon since he was five years old had been ushered in with blood and bruises, broken bones and the soul-deep panic of awakening with memories he hadn't really been present for, that he could never truly understand. Being awake, _aware_ inside the wolf had been disorientating and had brought him an uncomfortable new level of awareness of his condition, but _Merlin,_ the realisation that the familiar clouding of his consciousness, the desperate scramble to stay present in his own mind _wasn't coming…_

Remus ran his hands down his bare chest and let out a disbelieving burst of laughter. His palms came away unstained, no tacky resistance of spilt blood or shredded skin.

 _Meddling,_ his mind concluded. Things like this didn't just _happen,_ and he'd been feeling bizarrely un-bizarre all week, inexplicably well. _Someone has made this happen, and we need to find out who and why. There has been meddling._

 _Miracle,_ his heart countered. _It's a miracle for sure._

He stood there in the middle of the room, examining his unfractured limbs and unbloodied skin in such a haze of consternation that he didn't notice the footsteps on the staircase until they turned into the cautious creek of a door.

For a group so infamously un-punctual, it couldn't be denied that, on post-moon mornings the Marauders were unfailingly and precisely on time.

Remus looked over his shoulder to them, still too stunned to respond to their presence beyond wide-eyed staring. The three boys, for their part, seemed at just as much of a loss for how to react to Remus, upright and conscious less than a quarter hour after moonset, as he was.

" _Remus?"_ James asked, the skew of his glasses comically amplified by the dumbfounded expression he wore beneath them.

"I… I have _no_ idea," Remus replied.

"You're _standing_ ," Sirius pointed out, somewhat unnecessarily, as he struck out across the room, shedding his outer robes as he did and throwing them over Remus's shoulders as soon as he got close enough to do so. "How the _hell_ are you standing?"

Remus, who hadn't even realised he was shivering before he was engulfed in Sirius's second-hand warmth, shook his head and gave a weak shrug. "I don't know, I don't… I was _me._ Well, not _me_ exactly—I shifted, I just didn't… I was _awake_ on the inside, I was in control. I don't know how, I've no idea how that's even possible, but…"

A stunned silence settled over the room, only to be broken by Peter's apt appraisal of the situation.

"Bloody _fuck!_ ," he said—said it with a face-splitting grin, his hand twitching by his side with the instinct to deliver a Boys Club slap on the shoulder but too far from (and too used to post-moon caution around) Remus to do so.

"I know. It was… I mean, still awful, obviously, but…" Remus trailed off uselessly as Sirius guided him over to sit down on the ragged bed, for once not having to repair it from damage done by the wolf.

"That's… that's… _how?"_ Sirius tossed the question over his shoulder to James, who ran a hand through his hair and pushed his glasses up his nose, hazel eyes taking on the sharp edge of focus that indicated he had entered Research Mode. He'd roll up his sleeves at any moment.

"There's no precedent for this—we'd know," James said, and Sirius nodded his agreement, flooding Remus with a desperate fondness for his friends. They knew, of course, because they had made it their mission since second year to dig up every book, research paper, and newspaper article pertaining to Lycanthropy in Great Britain—James had even brought back a stack of texts from a family holiday in France, which Sirius had spent weeks translating into English. If anyone would be able to explain this, it was the Marauders. "Can you think of _anything_ that's been different? Any weird symptoms at all?"

Remus bit his lip for a moment and considered bluffing, but he knew it was no use—they'd know anyway, and he had no doubt the two were connected, so if he wanted to figure this out… "I _have_ been feeling a little odd this week…"

Sirius span on James, shouting an accusatory "I _told_ you!" at the same times as James yelled "You said you were fine!" in Remus's direction.

"I _was_ fine!" Remus countered, eager to diffuse the tension, "That's exactly what was odd. None of the usual aches, no nausea, I've not been tired…"

"Why didn't you say anything?" Peter asked.

Remus sighed. "Because you lot are worse than Poppy and you would have fretted?"

"Well now we're fretting _and_ betrayed," James said with a petulant scowl. "You broke the Sacred Marauders' Code of Honour."

He had indeed: the Code of Honour, Commandment C read "Save lies for teachers and (non-Moony) prefects. Always be honest with each other, except where it concerns surprises, presents, and bad haircuts.". Sirius had helpfully pointed out that James's hair was _always_ awful, and that to pretend otherwise was an insult to both James's intelligence and hair in general.

"Bugger off, Potter," Sirius said amiably. "The Honour Code is written in the back half of your diary, which happens also to be a children's Puddlemere United notebook."

"It is _not_ a diary, they're notes for my future autobiographical account of our many creative misadventures and works of genius. And are you suggesting you've been in violation of the Code, Black?"

"Nope," Sirius replied, popping the p and winking conspiratorially at Remus through his curtain of dark hair. "Anyway, we're digressing. Come on men, _think._ What's been happening? What've we missed?"

There was silence again, and again it was Peter who broke it.

"Well… I don't know, there was that girl, in the hospital wing last month… And she… the thing with the dittany—maybe she put something in it, or…?"

"Shit. _Shit,_ Pete, you might well be onto something there," James scrabbled around in the pocket of his robes, pulling out the Map and dropping hastily to his knees to flatten it out on the floor. "Peeves, Peeves, Peeves… buggering hell, where is he? If he saw her around before she left, if she got up to anything dodgy, Peeves'll know."

"But… she _was_ helping Moony, right? The scars healed up great, and she can't have been, you know, feeling that great after… all that and everything… but she helped anyway, yeah?" Peter pointed out uncertainly.

Sirius gave a hum of dubious agreement. "Maybe. Fucking edgy though, wasn't she? There was something off about her, no question."

Remus's face had paled, his hands shaking. "Oh god, you don't think she… but what could she of done? And—"

"Oi," Sirius cut him off with a tight squeeze to his lower arm, "it'll be fine. Whatever it is, you'll be fine, alright? Just don't panic, you'll get your prefect knickers in a twist."

Nodding and forcing the rising tidal wave of worry back down his throat, it finally occurred to Remus that he was still sat there, practically naked but for Sirius's robes. "I could probably do with some knickers, actually."

Sirius's head jerked up so fast he nearly snapped his neck, eyes like saucers. " _What?"_

Remus couldn't help but huff a laugh at that. "Clothing, Sirius—might be a good plan? If you've not got anything lacy on you I'm sure boxers will do."

Comprehension dawned on Sirius's face, and he had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. " _Oh,_ right, naked. I follow you. Oi, Pete! You've got Moony's clothes, right? Let's not keep the good man flashing."

Peter gave a mock salute before pulling a pair of pyjama bottoms and a jumper from his bag, tossing them over. "Sorry—we bought the usual, figured you wouldn't be up to getting into anything more complicated."

"That's fine—thanks Pete. Um, averted eyes please?" Remus addressed the last to all three of his friends, who simultaneously rolled their eyes in response.

"Your disdain for public nudity is practically un-boyish, you know. Such modesty is not the Marauder way," Sirius reminded Remus, for what had to be the five-hundredth time over the course of their friendship.

"Not to mention that unless something major has changed in the last ten minutes, we know exactly what's going on under all that knitwear," James said, eyes back on the Map.

Remus flushed. "I was in shock! Please just… just humour me, okay?"

"Oh for fuck's sake, just get dressed you puritan," Sirius said, obligingly if huffily turning away, the others following suit.

Remus had just tugged his jumper on when James slapped a hand down on the Map, going a very distinctive variety of rigid that could only mean he'd found something of utmost immediate importance.

"What? What is it?" Sirius asked, off the bed in a second and searching the parchment for whatever James had discovered.

"Well bugger me," was James's only response, other than to point something out to Sirius.

"I don't—oh. _Oh._ Fucking hell, _how_ did we miss _that?"_

"Miss _what?"_ both Remus and Peter asked at once.

"The fucking obvious, that's what," James replied.

"The girl?" Remus asked, stunned. She'd vanished from the hospital wing, and they'd been _so sure_ she'd gone back to wherever she'd come from…

"Brandy Smith, has to be," Sirius confirmed, a dangerous set to his jaw. "Hang on, is that…?" he trailed off, and James seemed to double take at whatever he was seeing.

"How the… that little _harpy!_ Is she made of smoke? Is that what's happening here, because this is getting bloody ridiculous."

"Oh for god's sake, _what now?"_ Remus asked, going over to see the map for himself.

" _Now,_ she is inside our fucking _dorm."_

…

 _Sorry for the shock—and I imagine it must have been_ quite _the shock—but I knew you wouldn't take the potion if I just offered it up, so I went ahead and vanished it into your goblet while you were at dinner. Now that you know it works, and what it does, I hope you'll continue to take it—the dose is two drops a day in the week leading up to the full, but a tablespoon the night of. You can put it in drinks just fine, but for the love of Merlin_ do not mix it with any other potions. _I would also strongly advise against getting it much hotter than a cup of tea, or leaving it in direct moonlight._

 _My apologies also for breaking into your room—I didn't look through anything, though I couldn't help spotting the notes on a Sticking Potion. Interesting stuff. I'd suggest a little shredded dragonhide as well as the pine sap might make it stronger? But adding Pepper-Up to the mix to stop it gumming up anyone's sinuses_ and _force them to sweat so their skin gets sticky faster? Fucking inspired._

 _I hope the potion worked well and that you're feeling a lot better than you expected to. To clarify, I don't want anything off you in return—just wanted to help out since I was able to. As a by the by, it would be great if you could keep this all quiet—I really shouldn't have the recipe, let alone the ingredients._

 _All the best to you and your room-mates,_

 _Bran Smith_

The letter burned a hole in Remus's pocket as the four boys thundered down the stairs to the dungeons, already just shy of an hour late for double Potions. Only once he was dressed and out of Gryffindor tower had it occurred to him that, under normal circumstances, he'd be passed out in the hospital wing rather than en route to class. It wouldn't be the _first_ time he'd made it to lessons the day after the full, although the handful of previous occasions had been in the summer when the moon set early, and he'd looked and felt like death the whole day, but still: there _was_ precedent, so his tale of a 'good night' to any enquiring Professors wouldn't be _totally_ unbelievable.

Not as unbelievable as the letter and potion that had been sat atop his otherwise undisturbed trunk by the time they got back to the dorm, all signs of Brandy—or Bran, as she'd signed herself off as—long gone. Remus had read the letter out to the others, and they'd responded with varying degrees of grace and indignation.

"But ho—"

"Don't you dare, James," Remus cut in before he could get going, "We have no clue. For the thousandth time this morning, we _do not know,_ so _please_ stop asking."

"Yeah, yeah, alright. I just… I hate not knowing."

Peter feigned an expression of shock as he jogged slightly to keep up. "The bloke who had us up at all hours for _four years_ making a map that tracked the movements of everyone in the castle so you could get in on their business? Who knew you had a problem with 'not knowing'?"

The other three's tense postures relaxed a little, Remus smiling wryly while Sirius and James let out brief snorts of laughter.

"Fair enough. But we find her tonight, agreed?"

"'Course we agree: we're the Marauders. Solving mysteries and uncovering the truth is practically our mission statement," Sirius replied with a smirk.

"I thought it was purveying aids to magical mischief-makers?" Peter asked.

Remus turned to Peter with a raised eyebrow. "Really? When did we change it from 'Fuck everything up and don't get caught?' "

"You were at a prefect's meeting, missed the vote." James grinned. "Traitor."

"Well excuse me if I'm the only one who paid attention to the 'don't get caught' part. And from the way Dumbledore keeps looking at you, _you'll_ be Head Boy by 7th, then you won't find it so funny."

James looked scandalised. "Me? Head Boy? How dare you? Bloody slander, that's what that is…" He pulled a theatrical shudder, and they all laughed again as they reached their destination and Peter shoved open the door to the dungeon classroom.

Slughorn glanced up and beamed at the quartet, ever delighted to see James and Sirius even if they _were_ an hour late and accompanied by two boys with far less influential surnames.

" _Boys!_ Now what time do we call this?" the professor asked with a conspiratorial eyebrow-waggle and tap of his watch.

James unfurled his most boys-club grin as he made his way to their usual table at the front desk. "Sorry sir—couldn't be helped: we needed to see a man about a dog."

There was a snort from one of the Slytherins, who ducked his head to whisper to his friends. "Sure they did, the poofs."

Sirius hooked his foot around the leg of the speaker's stool, yanking it from under the boy's arse without breaking his stride. "Sorry about that Avery," he said cheerily as the seat clattered to the floor and Avery whacked his chin on the desk on the way down.

There was muffled laughter from many of the Gryffindors, and even one or two of the Slytherins, though Lily Evans (who was sat on the other side of the room, and as such had not heard the whispered slur) ground her teeth in frustration.

Slughorn had managed to miss the entire exchange, and examined the floored Slytherin with some consternation. "Whatever are you doing down there, lad? Come along, up you get, no time for messing about. Now, you four shan't have the time to brew today's potion, though I expect at least sixteen inches of parchment from you on Dreamless Sleep and the problems one might face while making it. That's twenty inches for you, Pettigrew—don't think I don't notice your penmanship growing progressively larger throughout your essays. For the remainder of the lesson I'll ask Black and Lupin to assist Miss McKinnon; and Potter to assist Mr Longbottom whilst preventing Pettigrew from doing any further damage to an already precarious attempt at potioneering. Hop to it boys, we've not got all day, I'm afraid."

The quartet gave their respective "Yes Sir!"s, and set to their tasks. Sirius and Remus had the easier task, as Marlene's errors were minor and easily fixed. Frank's potion, on the other hand, was spewing acrid black smoke and bubbling a truly grotesque shade of muddy green.

"Why Frank," James began amiably as he peered into the cauldron, "I do believe you've brewed Hell right here in the classroom."

"Bugger off James," Frank groaned, prodding sadly at the disaster with his wand. "I think it might know my name."

"I think it's eating your wand, actually." Peter nodded to the cauldron from a safe distance, hands safely in his pockets.

"Bugger bugger _bugger,"_ Frank replied.

By quarter to eleven, Marlene's Dreamless Sleep was the intended shade of velvety purple, and Frank's was somewhere in the Hogwarts drainage system, though his wand had been saved, which was counted as a victory by all. Slughorn went round the class appraising the contents of each cauldron as always (and as always, Lily Evans and Severus Snape had completed the task without flaw)—a very typical Tuesday morning.

It wasn't until he turned to the back of the room, to the desks where no-one ever sat because the flame provision was temperamental and occasionally vicious, that the hum-drum mould was broken.

"And finally Miss Smith! Miss Smith, in case you are not already aware, is a new student with us, which is all terribly exciting, I know. Home schooled, would you believe it! And look at this: a _very_ promising poitioneer too! It's splendid my dear, quite splendid: you'll be joining asserting your position in our top ranks in no time, no doubt about it."

As one, the jaws of all four Marauders unhinged. There she stood by her cauldron, back in the shadows where not even her strikingly coloured and fairly expansive hair had been enough to call notice to her. Not even the fact that she was wearing Gryffindor robes.

It was both easier and harder to believe the events of the morning with her stood there. On the one hand, she was _definitely_ there—not the result of some joint hallucination brought about from inhaling too much dust in the Shack. On the other, there was something that made her look more liable to hex you than help you, though looking at her, one would be hard placed to put their finger on _what,_ precisely. Something about that hair, maybe, or the slightly jaunty angle of her rectangular wire-rim glasses.

The angry pink and puckered skin that crawled up one side of her neck and into her hairline certainly didn't assist in giving off a friendly sort of vibe. The four boys did their best not to look at it, but it certainly drew attention—after all, they knew what curse had put it there, had seen it before the skin healed and the blood stopped flowing.

She didn't meet any of their eyes, but the furtive way she flicked her wand and sent all her ingredients flying silently back to the cupboard, books to her bag the moment Slughorn turned his back suggested to the boys that she _was_ aware of their gaze.

She was out the door within seconds of the class being dismissed, leaving the Marauders scrambling to pack their bags, intent on speeding after her. They were almost clear of the room in thirty seconds flat, but by the time they got out into the corridor, she was gone.

Sirius slammed his hand against the wall in frustration, other fist clenched by his side. " _Fuck,_ we almost had her!"

"Is she part veela, or is there some other reason you're intent on harassing the new girl five minutes in?"

James span around as though he'd taken a stinging hex from the back, his hand going reflexively to his hair at the sound of Lily's voice.

Sirius, on the other hand, groaned. "Look, Evans, you know there is _nothing_ I love more than to stand around listening to your completely out-of-context policing of our every move, but now's a _really_ shit time, so could we maybe leave it out today?"

" _Sirius,"_ James hissed, before turning back to Lily with what he likely thought was a charming and apologetic smile, but in truth made him look rather deranged. "Ignore him—he's, you know." He circled his finger by his temple and whistled—the universally acknowledged symbol for 'unhinged and not to be listened to'. Behind him, Sirius looked on impassively, although the minute lift of his eyebrows indicated he was filing away that particular insult for later vengeance.

Lily scowled. "He's no worse than _you_ are, although he is having an impressive morning, even by his standards. You know you can't just _injure_ people for being in Slytherin, Black."

"Oh Merlin, here we go…" Sirius muttered, rolling his eyes.

"How would you feel if someone did that to _your_ brother? Avery has a sibling too—a family who wouldn't appreciate your attempts to give him spinal damage just because _you've_ got your silk boxers pulled too far up your arse this morning."

Sirius's eyes flashed at that, though he made no outward acknowledgement of her words. James, however, flinched.

"Evans, that's not fair."

"Oh, what would _you_ know about fair, Potter? It's fair for _him_ to do what he likes to his _inferiors_ whenever he pleases, but when I call him out on hurting people for no reason, I'm the 'Flame-Haired Harpy'?"

At this point, both Remus and Peter were ready to join James's protests, but Sirius got there first, still outwardly nonchalant, though his smirk had turned a shade icy.

"Afraid you've been knocked off the top spot for that position, Evans. If you'll excuse us, we've a more pressing issue to discuss with your replacement." He jerked his head at the others. "Come on."

They followed without argument, though James did look a little reluctant, and kept casting glances over his shoulder, brows furrowed.

"For a girl with so much potential to be ace, she _really_ pisses me off, I hope you know that mate," Sirius told James, eyes on the corridor ahead. "Where's the map?"

"Sirius, she's _clearly_ ducking us, and she has an _uncanny_ ability to do so thus far. She'll have to be in another lesson with us today—let's just wait, talk to her then," Remus suggested.

"As we just did with such _excellent_ success?"

"Oi, come on. Evans was being an arsehole, she shouldn't have said any of that, but don't be a twat to us about it," James said reasonably, and this seemed to shake Sirius out of his momentary dark cloud.

"Yeah, yeah okay. Right."

"If we get to lessons early we can get seats by the door—block her in," Peter suggested.

"Good," James agreed, "She'll just keep slipping us otherwise."

"Reckon she'll be in the hall for lunch?"

"Honestly? I doubt it," Remus said, to general agreement.

"We've got Defence last period, right?"

James's words were met with groans from the others: Glevent, the newly appointed DADA professor, was a near-universally unpopular authoritarian nightmare who seemed to consider Filch his personal minion. The once anticipated lesson had been approached with dread since the start of term, the one small mercy being the odds-on bet that he'd be gone before the year was out: they always were.

"Yeah, I know, sorry. But I think we should leave it till then—don't, you know, spook her, make her think we've given up, then catch her once she's lulled into a false sense of security. That way we have time to actually talk to her without any unnecessary detentions. Agreed?"

"Agreed," the others chimed in, and James seemed to perk up considerably.

"We have a plan, then. Excellent. I do love a good plan."


	11. Lessons, Both Scheduled and Otherwise

**Author's Notes:** I've been faffing about with this for ages, so I'm just going to put it up and hope that it's okay or I'll never get it done :P I hope the end doesn't feel too abrupt—the chapter was originally over 6,000 words so I've split it up into more bite-sized chunks, which means I already have the next chapter ready to put up, probably at the weekend, possibly Friday because we get a ludicrous number of random Fridays and Mondays off at college (don't worry, we pay for it: I don't break up for Christmas until the 23rd. _The 23rd._ How fucking obscene is that? I'm totally appalled, but then I'm offended at having to be in school in December at all: the whole month should be given over to festivities if you ask me...). Also a shout-out to Indieblue, because she wrote me Teddy/Lily-ness on tumblr and I love her eternally for it; and to SableUnstable for being a reviewing goddess. Seriously, you should have a cult dedicated to you—in fact, I'm gonna found one ;) Anywho, on with the show as they say...

* * *

Chapter Eleven:  
 _Lessons, Both Scheduled and Otherwise_

 _..._

Defence.

Bran stood hidden from sight in an alcove just down the corridor from the classroom for several minutes before entering, ostensibly watching the door, though her mind wasn't really on it.

The day had been intense—even more so than she'd anticipated, which had been a major misjudgement on her part. The Marauders had looked like they were moments from spontaneous combustion in Potions, but it had been another face in the room—one she'd neglected to consider in her focus on the Marauders—that had truly blindsided her.

Seeing Lily Evans had been a heart-attack in slow motion, and Bran's realisation that she had not prepared herself adequately for this hit her like a bludger to the skull, only she couldn't break the nose of the person responsible.

Lily'd had ink stains on her fingers: bottle green, the same shade both Al and Harry used. That had hit Bran harder than anything else—harder than the striking eyes or the deep orange hair just a few shades from her own, more even than the fact that she sat happily side-by-side with Severus Snape—a man who, in portraiture, she would never forgive for his treatment of her son. It was such a frivolous thing, what ink she used, but it was entirely new—a connection Bran had never before been aware of. She'd wanted her father and brother to be there, to see for themselves.

And suddenly facing them— _any_ of them—had seemed impossible. There was too much of her brothers in James and Lily, too much of Teddy in Sirius and Remus, too much of _themselves,_ and yet not.

So Bran had legged it and spent the rest of the day desperately evading detection.

" _You know, I think your problem is that you don't know how to back down from a physical confrontation, or how to stand your ground for an emotional one. If you worked that out, I suspect you'd be far less angry."_

Luna's words, spoken to Bran the previous Christmas after she had fought with Victoire and retreated to her hiding spot on the roof of Potter House, had haunted her thoughts all day. Her godmother had always had an eerie ability to drift straight into the heart of a problem, to offer the truth without judgement or reservation, and Bran knew she'd been right once again even as she wished it weren't the case.

 _Some Gryffindor,_ she thought bitterly. _This is cowardice and you know it._

Dragging her thoughts away from the past (or future—she was still struggling with the right words for this new-fangled reality she was living), Bran tried to refocus on the upcoming lesson. The Slytherins were with the Gryffindors again, and the teacher was a complete unknown. The Curse, of course, was still in full force in '75, so whoever it was would only last until the summer, but it was yet to be seen whether this would be a good thing or a bad. Professor Glevent, according to the timetable. Not a name she'd heard of, so it could go either way.

When she realised she only had a minute left to be in and seated, Bran pushed off the wall and headed towards the doors, steeling herself for whatever the hour ahead might have in store.

She settled herself on a vacant back desk, not thrilled to be corralled there by the Marauders (who had taken up the middle row in every lesson she'd shared with them since Potions, though they'd not tried to actually corner her yet), even if years of habit meant she felt most comfortable where she was furthest from the eyes of teachers: Bran had never been much of a one for rules, and Uncle George's eternally generous tutelage had taught her a lot in the way of 'Getting Away With Mischief For Fun and Profit'. Step one for students: the back of the classroom is your best friend.

Step two, for mischief-makers of all flavours: always know your enemy.

Bran raised her eyes to the front of the room.

Professor Glevent, who was perched very purposefully on the edge of his desk, was stern looking, tall and imposing.

Self-satisfied.

He scanned the students with the superior air of a man certain that he had everyone in his presence figured out, while himself remaining an enigmatic mystery. If one thing was always true about such types, it was that they rarely had the slightest clue who they were actually dealing with: they saw what they wanted to see and no more.

He was, in Bran's opinion, already off to a bad start. When his eyes fell on her—the new and unknown quantity—he looked her over slowly and in a way that might have resulted in a hexed pair of balls had he been a student and a little closer. Their eyes met and she raised an eyebrow—an expression of polite inquiry, but at least he wasn't self-absorbed enough to miss the note of challenge there. His face darkened a little, and she sighed as he turned away.

 _Twenty-seven._

The challenge had been exceedingly popular in Bran's wider family, but with herself, the boys, Fred and Roxanne especially. The aim was to predict how many Detentions one would receive in the first year with a new professor, and over the years the simple guessing game had developed into a fine-tuned psychological art. The lower the number, the better the student-teacher relationship was expected to be.

Twenty-seven did not bode well.

Glevent stood, pulling his shoulders back as if posing for a _Prophet_ photo shoot, and called for silence, waiting longer than necessary after it fell and only speaking once everyone began to get uncomfortable.

 _What. A. Wanker. Could he make a_ worse _first impression?_

"Everyone turn to page three hundred and ninety-four: today we will be looking at Werewolves."

 _That wasn't a_ challenge, _for Merlin's sake!_

Bran was rapidly becoming certain that she had offended the universe in some way, and that all of this was a cruel and unusual punishment for her crimes. She watched as the Marauders all stiffened, could tell by the tension in their necks how hard they were all resisting turning in their seats, sneaking glances at her over their shoulders. James whispered something at Remus with obvious agitation, having to lean across Sirius's book to do so, and Remus's reply looked to be quelling though tight-lipped. When Sirius turned to address Remus Bran could see the storm in his expression, and whatever he said was met with a firm ' _No.'_

 _I should have talked to them. I backed down when I should have stayed, and now they're going to spend the whole lesson just waiting for me to sell Remus out._

This was a worst-case-scenario to a degree that Bran hadn't even _considered,_ and as soon as Glevent opened his mouth, it started to get worse.

"Now, as you may or may not know," he began, "Werewolfry is caused by a disease of the blood named _Lycanthropy—_ note that down, hurry up—and as such, Werewolves may also be called _Lycanthropes._ The infection is contracted when one is bitten by a transformed wolf during the full moon, causing the saliva to mix with the blood of the human, and once this occurs, the individual cannot be cured. It is officially unknown whether Lycanthropy is hereditary—can be passed on from parent to child—as there are little to no recorded instances of these creatures breeding. However, in cases such as this, we must turn to logic for answers, and logic tells us that the child of a werewolf must be a werewolf also."

Bran's knuckles turned white, and she had to slap a panicked hand down over the corner of a piece of parchment that had caught light to put it out, trying to ignore the sick roll of her stomach that seemed to accompany every incident of her accidental magic these days. _Teddy_ had a werewolf parent—a werewolf in this very room—and he wasn't a Lycanthrope, didn't even like rare meat the way Bill did. She'd read the studies—some, in fairness, conducted after this time, but others that had already been produced by now. Studies that proved Lycanthropy wasn't hereditary, financial reports on the economic and social benefits of a decent welfare system for Werewolves, like the one which had been in place her whole life back home. Studies that had been quietly swept under the rug by a corrupt Ministry so that officials could cream 'bonuses' from the unallocated funding, causing untold suffering in the process. Bran's blood was boiling at the very concept.

"As we know, the wolves are incredibly vicious creatures, who will seek out human—particularly wizarding—victims to hunt and kill. It is widely known from studies by researchers within the Ministry that many of the aggressive traits of the transformed beast translate themselves into the Lycanthrope's human form over time, making for cruel and dangerous individuals even apart from the full moon. Hence there have been calls by many to have registered Werewolves permanently contained in reserves, or indeed put down altogether, which have repeatedly been blocked by so-called 'activists' intending to whip up controversy within the system."

"That's absolute _bollocks."_

Bran didn't even _realise_ she'd spoken the words out loud until a classroom full of heads swivelled in her direction. Glevent narrowed his eyes, and his voice was unnaturally even and all too audible through the pin drop silence of the classroom.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm sorry Sir, but half of what you're saying is opinion with no factual basis whatsoever, and the other half is straight up _wrong._ Whatever sources you're quoting, if you have any sources at all, are _clearly_ biased in the extreme, and sound more like Ministry propaganda than anything resembling true magical research."

"Yeah? What are _your_ sources then?" a boy in the front row asked.

"Well I've got at least three independent studies proving that Lycanthropy isn't hereditary in my trunk if you ever feel like picking up a book," she shot back, earning snorts of laughter from a few members of the class and glowers from several others.

"Enough," Glevent raised a hand, and the class fell silent. He picked up a note from his desk, scanning it before his gaze settled again on Bran. "Smith, isn't it?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Well, Smith, would you care to share with us why you are so _very_ concerned with these beasts that you feel the need to display such impertinence and see fit to question a professor on the veracity of their lesson's content?" His voice was still calm, but it was knife-edged, cruel.

"I'm _concerned_ with the truth, Sir _,_ though I was under the impression that that was _your_ job. My bad, _Sir."_

Glevent's eyes sparked cold fury, and the rest of the class watched on in silence still. "You listen to me, little girl: it is one thing to question me in my classroom—an act of insolence for which you _will_ be punished, I assure you—but I suggest you be _very_ careful speaking against the Ministry. You forget your place, and I don't imagine you should enjoy such a sharp reminder as will await you, should you continue along your present path."

Bran couldn't decide whether she was furious or simply disbelieving at this point. "Gosh, no, probably not. See here I was thinking 'Well the Ministry certainly has its flaws, like the deliberate under-allocation of funds within the DCRMC so that officials can cream bonuses off of what's left spare at the end of every year,' but I had no idea that it was a _dictatorship_. Say, when _did_ they repeal the right to free speech, because obviously I missed that. Shit, should we be on the lookout for secret Aurors? Do we have to be of age before they bundle us off into the night or should I expect a visit any day no—"

" _SILENCE!"_

Every student, Bran herself included, jumped a foot in the air at the volume of that one word. Glevent's face was fading from crimson back into its normal shade, and when he spoke again his temper was reigned back in.

"You will excuse yourself from my classroom and you will not return until you are explicitly permitted to do so. I will be discussing your behaviour with your head of house, and you can anticipate your summons to detention very shortly. Rest assured, you won't be seeing a free evening for a very long time."

Bran raised her hands in mock-surrender, then shoved her book, parchment and quill back into her bag. "On my way out anyway, Sir—frankly I've better things to be doing with my time than sitting here listening to this, like burning off my eyebrows or stabbing myself repeatedly with a fork. You can anticipate the speedy return of my detention summons with attached studies and pamphlets for your education. Feel free to read them or shove them up your arse: either way, at least you'll have _some_ truth in the general area you're speaking out of."

She paused by the door and turned to give Glevent the most passive-aggressive curtsey she could muster, then she was gone, the classroom unbearably quiet in her wake.

"Woah," Frank Longbottom said, breaking the silence, though Glevent quickly followed his quietly expressed admiration with a deduction of five points from Gryffindor. Frank swore under his breath, and Glevent made it ten.

"If anyone else would like to indicate their approval of Miss Smith's sentiments, I suggest they escort themselves out."

Frank was out of his seat in a second, which made him half a second slower than James, Sirius and Peter. Remus, who had seemingly entered some form of catatonia, received a sharp kick in the ankle from Sirius before he scrambled to join them in standing, almost tripping over the legs of his chair in the process.

Marlene, Alice and Lily were barely a moment behind them, and even a few Slytherins seemed on the verge of getting up, though quelling glares from a few of their more domineering housemates prevented any of them from actually making it to their feet.

Severus Snape was notably absent from the gaggle of tempted Slytherins—he remained perfectly still in his chair, examining the back of Remus's head with narrow-eyed suspicion.

"Well, if that's all of us," James made a sweeping gesture towards the doors, "shall we?"

"You _shall_ be joining Miss Smith in detention, all of you," Glevent warned.

Sirius snorted. "Might want to pull your head out of your arse to make room for those pamphlets, mate. And you lot," he added, turning to those still seated, "can get your heads out of his arse too."

There was a snicker from a pair of Slytherins towards the back of the room, Amycus Carrow speaking up just as Sirius was about to follow James, Frank, and Alice from the room.

"Not everyone's as obsessed as you are with shoving things up arses, Black."

"Such as my foot up yours?" Sirius asked, fixing the boy with a cold stare. "You wait for it, Carrow. You just wait."

The door swung shut with a resounding thud behind him, and the small group turned to one another with a mixture of expressions—some dark with anger, others almost giggling at their own brass. The Marauders at least were well acquainted with causing trouble, but they'd never stormed out of a class before—they'd never had a need to. Usually, if a teacher did anything deserving of a little retribution, they sat back and watched the chaos from one of their pranks unfold. This was something else, though—perhaps even something more.

"What an _arsehole,"_ Marlene spat, quite unnecessarily, punctuating each word with a small, pissed-off pause.

"You can say that again…" Sirius muttered, unconsciously shifting closer to and slightly in front of Remus—a protective gesture the others had long since given up asking about.

"Quite something though, isn't she?" Frank said with a grin, and the others nodded. "D'you reckon she is one? You know, a werewolf?"

Alice—who had fallen into step next to him—shook her head as they made their way down the corridor.

"No, I don't think she would have done that if she was—she's just bought herself a lot of attention she'd probably rather avoid if she was a Lycanthrope herself. Maybe she knows someone who is, though: 'concerned with the truth' or not, I don't think you get quite that angry that quick unless it's personal."

No-one seemed to notice the quick glances the Marauders shot at one another, and Remus ruffled his hair over his ears to cover the pinkness appearing there.

"It was brave of her, to do that," Lily said, speaking up for the first time since they left the classroom. Her usual enmity with the Marauders (or more specifically James and Sirius) had, it seemed, been put on hold in favour of more important things. "With her being new, and… I think that's the first thing she's said all day, you know? It's… quite the way to make an entrance."

"A bit mad but, you know, pretty good mad," Peter agreed.

"I don't know, might be quite smart, actually. She won't be wasting her time with any shite friends now, will she? She's made a statement, told people where she stands. Not going to end up buddying off with some prejudiced wanker only to have to ditch them down the line," Sirius said, earning slight smirks from most of the others, though Lily only bit her lip with a thoughtful frown.

"Something tells me she's a fairly strong judge of character. Did anyone else see the way she was looking at Glevent right at the beginning of the lesson? Like she wanted to hex him sideways before he even said anything."

"Bit crap for her though—detention on her first day," James sighed, running a hand back through his hair.

"Didn't you get detention on your first day, Potter?" Lily asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

"You remember that?"

James's expression indicated a level of joy that most people lose the ability to feel at age six. Lily simply huffed and turned away, leaving James to shoot a questioning pout and shrug at the other Marauders. Remus and Sirius smirked at him, the former shaking his head fondly. That boy would never learn.

"Will she be alright, do you think?" Marlene asked, and there was a collective furrowing of brows. James's hand flew to his bag, and he side-eyed the others before gesturing to it jerkily with his head.

"Maybe us four should go look for her?"

"Are you sure you lot are the best idea?" Frank asked sceptically, though only Lily looked genuinely worried.

Sirius scoffed. "Mate, it's her first day and she's already made an enemy of a teacher, landed herself a shiteload of detentions and stormed out of a lesson. Do you really think there's anyone more qualified for the job?"

"Well when you put it like that…" Frank laughed and turned up the stairs with the rest of the group, headed back towards Gryffindor Tower. "Well, I wish you the best."

"And do not upset her—I am looking at you, James Potter—or I _will_ take points," Lily warned, and while James flushed with delight at having been addressed directly so many times in the last minute, Sirius gave a mock bow, infusing the action with levels of sarcasm no-one else (except perhaps Remus on a bad day) could ever dream of achieving.

"As you wish, fair lady. Come on, lads—we've a rebel to find."


	12. Rebels Make for Good Company

**Author's Notes:** Happy Advent, pals 'n' gals :) Wee bit of a shorter chapter today—I do hope you'll forgive me. I've looked over the last chapter and there are a few things I want to go back and fiddle with—just the odd word here and there because I'm a pedant, so if you get emails saying a chapter's been updated or replaced (I don't know, does alert you? I have no clue, but if it does...) don't worry about going back to reread or expect it to be noticeably different at all—I'm just tweaking :P That said, I don't know when I'll get around to doing so, so... yeah. Just a heads up for some point, whenever it may be :P Weirdly enough, I'm edging my way back into some of my earlier drafts for the story now—the original 18 chapters I had ready to go before I decided I hated them, and have now decided I rather like again, so I suspect the next few parts will be amalgams and adaptations of those, which should make me a little quicker off the mark :) So proceed, my dears, and know that I consider reviews to be the greatest Christmas presents ;) xxx

* * *

Chapter Twelve:  
 _Rebels Make for Good Company_

 _..._

"Fuck. _Fuck."_

Bran sat under the willow by the shore of the Black Lake, a cigarette in one hand and her head in the other.

 _"Red, we love you and sometimes that means letting you delude yourself, but—and I say this because I care—you will_ never _be able to hold your temper or your tongue. That's just how it is."_

Jay had been right, of course. She'd told him to bugger off and wandlessly slammed a door in his face, marking the second time she'd broken his nose, but he'd been right: she'd always been a loose canon on those fronts, and without the constant moderating influences she'd been so used to, she'd managed to majorly screw herself over in a single day.

It had always been Jay putting a stop to the worst of her impulses: Teddy never had the heart to tell her she was being a twat, and Al—with all his sensible Slytherin instincts—was more than happy to let his older brother risk a hexing. Jay, though, had possessed the perfect balance of brutal honesty, even temper, and a sense of Gryffindor and sibling duty to prevent his sister causing damage to herself or others.

Bran wondered how she was supposed to survive without him keeping her in check, without Teddy to console her in the aftermath of her cock-ups, without Al and Scorpius to help her figure out how to _fix_ the situation.

Merlin alive did she miss her Slytherins. At a complete loss as to how to untangle the mess she'd gotten herself into without them, Bran had retreated to the shores of the Black Lake to sit on a rock and stew, chain-smoking and tossing stones out over the glassy surface, blasting them to pieces with a Bombarda before they hit the water. It was freezing, and she missed her good cloak which, to her knowledge, was stuck in some bizarre space-time-continuum behind the kitchen door at Malfoy Manor.

In short, things were—thus far—going terribly, terribly wrong.

Bran had been so lost in these thoughts, wondering how in the hell she was supposed to pull the whole damned thing back from the brink of utter buggery, that she didn't notice the sound of feet approaching until they turned into the thuds of people settling themselves on other rocks around her. She stifled a jump and turned sharply, wondering whether the day was, in fact, going to get even _worse._

"Nice display," Sirius said with a smirk. "We applaud you."

 _You're so young._ That was her first thought. It hadn't really hit her in the hospital wing—she'd been a mess of pain potions and shock, it had been darker then, and she'd spent the whole day avoiding their eyes—but facing them in the clear, cool afternoon light she couldn't think of anything else.

Pettigrew still bore a childish softness, smaller and rounder than the others with ruddy cheeks and dirty blond hair, something about his cheery smile and the way he shoved his hands into his pockets screaming 'one of the lads': Bran decided that, were he a muggle in her own time, he'd likely be very fond of footie and Nandos. He was just a _boy,_ younger than Teddy and her brothers—probably younger even than Bran herself, though not by much. She'd expected violent fury, to sense evil rolling off him in waves, but she didn't: she just felt confused, somehow cheated.

 _What happened to you? What changed?_

James didn't fit into his shoulders or his hands, lacking the coils of honed quidditch muscle he'd one day have to balance himself out. His hair, though no tamer nor more wild than in his twenties, didn't have quite the same artfully rugged quality it would carry when combined with stubble on a slightly squarer jaw, and there was a defensiveness—a sharp, determinedly cocky tension about his eyes that didn't chime with the easy confidence of the husband, father, and natural leader he would grow to be.

Remus was, as ever, a bit of a quandary to look at: a scruffy, boyish mop of tawny waves, long and lanky in trousers that jacked up at the hems. He was all ill-fitting adolescence complicated by old-eyes and clever-fingered hands, the prominent red line bisecting his eyebrow and the top of his cheekbone dissonant with unravelling knitwear and a sort of stillness you didn't notice unless you were looking. Bran _was_ looking, though, and she saw that there was a scar missing from his face, several more from his hands, and the beginning of a limp absent from his walk—one she never wanted to watch come into being.

Sirius was, of course, escaping the awkwardness of figure so common to teenage boys, and somehow that made it worse. He had to be at least seventy percent leg, tall (though not so tall as Remus and just shy of James, shorter—like all of them—than he would grow to be), pale and dark and _sharp._ His eyes looked as likely to cut you as his cheekbones, and somehow the lack of the tip of a tattoo poking above his robe collar did nothing to soften him at all. The man she had known in the portrait had been a rebel-with-a-cause, a protester and mischief-maker, the kind of person to wink at you and pass you a galleon under the table for causing trouble.

Sirius Black at nearly sixteen looked like a nasty accident waiting to happen: agitated, lost, and trying to hide a dozen fears in a tense jaw and clenched fists, shaking half out of his skin with the need to throw a punch or set something on fire. Bran's heart ached with worry for him, and behind that worry—somewhere deep and nagging nestled near the back of her skull—was an uneasy recognition: Bran _knew_ that look, understood all too well the brittle, glass-edged defences lurking just beneath Sirius's smile.

 _We are one very short fuse from an explosion, you and me,_ she thought.

"You alright there?" Sirius asked, an eyebrow arched with amusement, and Bran wanted to jump headfirst into the lake and stay there when she realised her mouth was hanging slightly open.

 _Nice, now he thinks you're ogling him. Off to a brilliant start._

"Fine, thanks—just wasn't expecting company."

"Don't tell us you've lost your bottle already," James said with a grin, shoving his glasses up his nose with a grin as he hoicked the hem of his robes out of the water. "That bastard's only been here a few weeks and it's still taken too long for someone to tell him where to shove it."

They were watching her—all four of them—and Bran swallowed convulsively. _You know them. You know how to speak to three of them at least: you've been doing it since you could talk._

She absolutely couldn't have them thinking she'd 'lost her bottle'.

"I aim to please," she replied slowly, forcing a tight smile she couldn't have felt less if she'd tried.

Sirius snorted. "Well you've certainly not pleased _him,_ but if you ask me that's cause for an award."

Bran watched, feeling a little as though she'd detached from her own body, as Sirius reached over and swiped the cigarette from between her fingers and brought it to his own lips. Remus, who was sat on a rock behind Sirius, scowled and launched a light kick at his friend's back.

"For god's sake, Sirius, smoke your own."

"I'm out," Sirius mumbled, and Remus rolled his eyes, digging around in his own bag and pulling out a tin of Golden Virginia.

"No you aren't—you just insist on buying a brand you know you hate and then stealing everyone else's. Here," Remus passed Sirius the tin, and Sirius hummed thankfully before passing the remains of what he'd stolen back to Bran and setting about rolling himself a new one.

Bran examined the end of the cig, slightly damp from Sirius's lips, and grimaced a little in distaste. "Thanks."

"Not a problem," Sirius grinned, bright and disarming, and the degree to which he looked like Teddy in that moment knocked Bran for six.

Looking away under the pretence of relighting the cigarette, Bran dragged her focus back to the conversation at hand. "Anyway, he was wrong. If teachers are going to spout lies in their lessons they should expect someone to notice."

"Best reason I've ever heard for telling a teacher he's ignorant, lying scum," James smirked.

Bran groaned heavily and sunk her head into her knees.

 _"_ Don't worry—Sirius told him he had his head up his arse before we left, so you're not the _only_ one he wants to strangle in their sleep."

 _Oh Merlin._

" _Left?_ As in you walked out too?" Bran asked, turning herself fully around to scan the four strange, familiar faces.

"Group of us followed you out—you know, solidarity and the like," Sirius replied, waving an aristocratically elegant hand dismissively. Posh git.

"Oh joy, now I'll be down for inciting rebellion as well as verbal assault. Wonderful."

Remus gave her a small, crooked smile, though his eyes quickly darted away as he reached to take the tin of baccy back from Sirius.

"What you said, though… most people wouldn't have called him out like that— _for_ that."

"Sorry. Probably wasn't particularly sensitive of me…" Bran flinched, suddenly realising just how uncomfortable the whole situation had likely made him.

"What? No, that's not what I meant. Honestly, I'll never have been so pleased to get a detention."

Sirius and James frowned at that, of course, evidently a little put out.

"And loads of us thought you were right. How many walked out with us, James?"

The fourth voice took Bran off guard: a cheerful Northern twang that seemed to fit perfectly with the adolescent face of Peter Pettigrew. He sounded as nice as he looked.

"Us four, Longbottom, Fortescue, McKinnon…Evans… so eight, I make it?"

"Sounds right to me," Sirius agreed and nudged Bran's knee with the toe of his shoe. "See, you're making friends already."

She could have sworn her face must have lit up like a Lumos, and internally berated herself for acting like such a child. But he'd said she was making _friends—_ surely that implied that they were, possibly, prepared to befriend her themselves? Not to mention Lily had walked out with them—hardly an action to be taken lightly from a prefect. Bran felt a surge of pride, but bit down on her lip to keep from grinning.

"I feel like shouting at Professors isn't the standard way to make friends…"

"Ah, but shouting at wankers is the way to make _good_ friends," Sirius argued, and Bran smiled. This time it came easier.

"So…" James began, "… Bran, eh? You weren't joking?"

She feigned surprise (not letting on that she knew about the Map was going to be a struggle), and he grinned.

"Trade secret I'm afraid, we know all sorts. Not everything, though: you're a bit of a mystery. Never had a new girl before, everyone just starts at eleven."

His tone was light-hearted, but Bran couldn't have missed the edge of seriousness there if she'd tried. This was _exactly_ what she'd been on edge about all day.

"I was home-schooled, now I'm here," she shrugged. "Not particularly mysterious, I wouldn't have thought."

"Maybe not, but you're missing the part where you appear in a puff of smoke looking like you've pissed off a dragon."

Bran felt her face hardening, her expression going cold with shock, and this time the surprise was entirely genuine. They'd seen her in the hospital wing, so she'd expected them to ask what she'd been doing there, but they shouldn't have known any details, surely they _couldn't_ have. Her hand flew up to the side of her neck, which was still sore, and Remus shot James a chastising glare.

"Sensitively done, James."

James frowned, realising that he'd perhaps not floated that one quite as gently as he might have done, and Remus turned back to her with apologetic eyes.

"We found you—we were outside talking and saw the smoke, so we went to see what it was, and when it cleared you were lying there. I think what James was _trying_ to get at was checking that you're okay. It… it didn't look good, and we were worried."

Bran dropped her head and let her eyes screw shut. It hadn't occurred to her to ask who'd found her, but if there was anyone she wished it hadn't been, it was them. If she thought they were going to be asking questions before, it was now sure to be far, far worse.

"I'm… sorry you had to see that. I don't really… I can't remember any of it. It took two days for me to come round, and I was pretty much patched up by then. Madam Pomfrey said it was… messy, though."

The tone had changed so quickly, and the four faces looking back at her when she opened her eyes had turned melancholy and somewhat uncomfortable.

"You kept shaking," Pettigrew said with a shudder. "It was horrible."

Bran looked at him, forcing herself to see the boy before her and think of him as just that—just what he was, and not what he had been in another time, another life. He was a Marauder, their friend, and from what she'd heard from the portraits, at this point in their lives he'd never been anything but loyal. Could she trust him? No, not yet, and maybe not ever, but she knew she had to try and know him at least. After all, wasn't it her job to make sure the future didn't happen? Alienating him now was hardly going to help her case.

"Poppy said she thought I'd probably been under the Cruciatus," she ventured, unsure as to whether they'd been privy to that information.

James, Sirius and Pettigrew—no, _Peter,_ his name was Peter—nodded, not meeting her eye, but Remus looked up with a frown.

"You don't remember that either?"

"Not a thing," she replied honestly, shaking her head. "Last I was aware, I was lying in bed, then I woke up in the Hospital Wing. Everything in between is… gone. I've been trying to bring it back, but…"

"Well, what about your family?" James asked, utterly uncomprehending. "Don't they know what happened? Do they even know where you are?"

"They're… away." Bran hedged, thinking fast. "Way away, working—I was on my own. I was going to go and stay with friends, but Professor Dumbledore said since I was here anyway I might as well stay on."

Lies, lies and more lies, and what was more, they didn't look as though they were buying it. _Of course_ they weren't buying it, but she hoped they took her evasiveness and obvious discomfort as a sign of something true: that she really didn't want to talk about it.

The quiet went on for a few moments past uncomfortable, until James cleared his throat.

"Well, you'll need a good set of guides: some fellow students with experience, strapping individuals distinguished among the student body to show you the ropes."

Remus rolled his eyes at his friend's theatricality, though he was smiling along with the others.

Bran nodded. "Yeah, I thought that—think you could recommend someone?"

Sirius, Peter and Remus laughed while James flicked a V at her.

"Luckily for you and your evidently poor observational skills, us four happen to be just the fellows for the job. Consider it an honour: there's not a soul in the castle who knows it better than we do."

She grinned. "Modest chap, aren't you?"

"The modestest. Come on: we'll give you a proper tour of the tower—it's the least we can do after what you've done for Moony, which… you know, considering your showdown with Glevent… guessing the potion's legit and not some fancy poison, right?"

Bran huffed out a disbelieving laugh. "No, it's not a poison: I tend not to leave incriminating notes when staging elaborate murders."

"Smart girl," Sirius smirked. "You'll fit in just fine."

James stood to head back to the castle, grinning when he had to catch Peter's arm to keep him from falling over, then turned back as though something had just occurred to him.

"I'm James, by the way—James Potter, Gryffindor Chaser, both exceedingly handsome as you can see _and_ devilishly clever. This here's Peter Pettigrew, who has a vaguely disturbing relationship with Honeydukes but will slay you at Gobstones or Wizard's Chess; the poncey-looking posh one's Sirius Black, as in 'The Most Ancient and Noble House Of', but we don't talk about that; and the cardigan-wearing prefect is Remus Lupin—most charming Lycanthrope you could ever hope to meet and a great deal wiser than the rest of us, but not half as mild-mannered and innocent as he looks. Don't let all the dusty books and knitwear fool you."

Bran laughed as she pushed herself up off the roots, her heart warmed by James' exuberance. The others were beaming at him, and Sirius gave him a jovial shove towards the lake before setting back off across the grounds with his arm slung over Remus's shoulders, James doing the same to Peter. She watched them for a moment, smiling at the easy friendship that reminded her so much of her own with Jay, Al, and Teddy, and feeling a great deal lighter than she had in days, she followed them.


	13. And Thus Begins The Dance

**Author's Notes:** Warning, this is a crappy chapter. It's super short, and just urgh. URGH. I've been really struggling with this at the moment and feel like I need to put SOMETHING up or I'll give up and I really don't want to do that. So apologies for this—it's really just a space holder until I'm back on a roll :) forgive me x

* * *

Chapter Thirteen  
 _And Thus Begins The Dance_

 _..._

"She's lying through her teeth."

James, Remus, and Peter turned at the words, Sirius clicking the door shut behind him with a raised eyebrow, inviting any of the others to challenge his statement.

They couldn't: he was so _obviously_ right, she was so _obviously_ lying, or at the least skirting _way_ around the distant edge of truth, that it had seemed wrong to call her out on it—like they would have been violating the rules of some game they weren't sure they'd agreed to play.

But they _had_ played, nonetheless.

"I'm not sure she was lying about not remembering, actually," Remus said, playing devil's advocate. "She looked genuinely blindsided when we said we'd found her."

"Okay, so she doesn't remember that bit, but are you really buying that she's blanked on what actually _happened_ to her? How she ended up here? Which, by the way, is _still_ fucking impossible."

Remus shrugged. "She almost _died,_ Sirius: I doubt she'd be the first person to block that kind of thing out—I mean, you saw her that day: she was practically catatonic, she said _one word_ the whole time, and even that barely."

Sirius's expression took on an uncomfortable edge, suddenly rather more interested in his shoes than he had been moments before.

"Sirius," James prompted warningly.

"She was talking, when I was carrying her," he admitted with a sigh. "I think she thought I was someone else, someone she knew: Moony's right, she was totally out of it."

"What did she _say?"_ Peter asked, tipping forward where he was perched on the end of his bed like he was listening to one of Remus's muggle urban legends.

Brow furrowed, Sirius grunted disagreeably, though it was muffled by his fingers as he flicked his thumbnail over his teeth—a nervous habit that only ever came out around his three closest friends. He was the only one still standing, and he was clearly resisting the urge to pace. "I knew you'd be here."

James and Remus exchanged a baffled look.

"What do you—"

"That's what she said. 'I knew you'd be here to take care of us'. Then something about trying to help, wanting me—or whoever she thought I was—to be proud of her. I don't know, it was fucking nonsense talk, alright?"

The whole room felt thick with the uneasy silence, and Sirius huffed out a breath before kicking his shoes off at his trunk with a force that suggested he simply needed to hear the thud of something being hit.

"Okay," James began, "so she was trying to get to someone she knew, who'd help her, and ended up here by accident?"

"She said she was meant to be going to stay with friends, right?" Peter reminded them. "While her parents are away?"

Remus made a dubious noise at the back of his throat, his expression complicated.

"What?" James asked. "You've got your thinky face on."

"Well," Remus began, then paused. "Look, James, your parents are out of the country all the time, aren't they. If you got cursed to the point of almost _dying,_ do you really think there's a force on earth that could stop them getting home as soon as was physically possible? I just… work or not, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't want to come and _check_ on her, at least. What parents wouldn't, if they could?"

"Mine," Sirius replied, a dark look on his face. "Mine wouldn't care."

The silence that fell over the room at that was no longer uneasy, but brittle, angry. Grimmauld Place and its owners weren't a topic they were usually permitted to address head-on, and it was rare for Sirius himself to allude so directly to his relationship with his mother and father. James, Remus, and Peter knew very little in the way of detail, but what they did know was this: that Walburga and Orion disapproved of Sirius's house, his friends, his muggle sympathies, his behaviour, his… well, his existence generally, it seemed. They knew that Sirius truly, darkly, terrifyingly _hated_ them. They knew that Sirius sometimes winced when teachers raised their voices, and that his hands would often shake for a week or two after the holidays.

They weren't supposed to _mention_ any of this, of course, but they knew.

"Wait, you don't think… you're not saying her _parents_ did that to her, are you?" Peter asked, aghast.

"No, no, I don't think so," Remus said, shaking his head firmly. "I just think there's probably more to that part of the story than she said."

"I get the feeling there's going to be a lot more to a _lot_ of this story, and the distinct impression that we've already managed to get ourselves… _involved,_ " James said with a contemplative frown.

For the first time since they'd got back to the dorm, the tension seemed to drop out of Sirius's shoulders as he shot James a broad grin. "Aren't we always?"

James gave a small smile and a smaller sigh, tipping his head back and rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses. "We are, at that. Well, lads: I think it's safe to say we've found our next Marauder Project."

…

Bran closed the door behind her, and with a few strides she was face down on her bed, half smothering herself in her pillow. She was _exhausted._

The Marauders had made it easier for her than she'd expected, though the absence of any pressing questions had felt like an entity in itself: a sidelong glance she only caught a moment of before it vanished; the slight upward tip of an eyebrow at a blatant untruth; a moment of silence that lasted only half a beat too long, but long enough to identify itself as the place a reasonable question or demand for answers should have been.

Bran admired their restraint, and she appreciated it, but keeping up with the steps to the negative-space dance she was enforcing had taken its toll on her energy, and on her emotions.

It could so easily have been easy, if she'd let it be. If she'd been someone else, if she didn't need to lie to them, if she didn't know in terrifying, intimate detail the ways in which she was going to have to stop their lives from falling apart over the coming years. It could have been easy, and that seemed to make it harder. In every playful insult, burst of laughter, and fond elbow jammed into ribs, she could _feel_ home, right there, breathing on the back of her neck until the second she turned around to catch it, then gone. The feeling was there in the inside jokes she couldn't laugh at, the stories she couldn't tell, because Bran Smith didn't know these things about them—didn't know them at all.

Nevertheless, in the moments she managed to push aside the context of her own presence in their lives, they were… a miracle. To be with them, able to reach out and tug on a sleeve or knock shoulders, to see them laughing and smiling and _real_ was a wonder—a blessing, and one she was absolutely certain she'd done nothing to deserve.

 _I'll earn the perks as I go,_ she thought. _If I get you to the children who never knew you, maybe I'll deserve this then._

Of course, the possibility that such a task was reserved in payment for something else—something, perhaps, that she couldn't remember—didn't escape Bran for a second.

" _Oh Red,"_ her brothers sighed in her head, " _what've you done this time?"_

"I don't know. I'm sorry, I just… I don't know."


End file.
